#so often I figured out how to use important game mechanics after endless hours of doing it the hard way 😭😭😭

[samfangalore]

300 hrs later and I just figured out how to fast travel 🥲

[draco-omega]

10 months ago, I decided to make a game.

10 months later, I have a bunch of art and a bunch of interface code and a whole pile of design notes, and not much game.

This is my story.

(Now in bullet point form so that I can stop redrafting it >.>)

I have a treatment-resistant anxiety disorder which significantly interferes with my ability to work - both on my own projects and other things that might be called 'gainful employment'. (I still feel some shame at admitting this so bluntly, even though I feel ideologically that there should be no more shame in this than any physical impairment that resulted in the same. Fuck mental health stigma, defining self-worth by employment is toxic capitalist dogma, etc, etc.)

In part because of this, I had been effectively unemployed and living with my mother for a number of years. (I still did my best to hammer out projects, but nothing, y'know, actually PAID anything... >.>)

Then in late 2017, my mother died (somewhat unexpectedly) of cancer, which left me with no home (we'd been sharing an apartment that she had been covering most of the rent on) and literally zero income. Obviously grief and upheaval did not help with any of my prior difficulties managing employment, either.

After some debate, I decided to combine the savings I had left over from my last stint as a network administrator with a (modest) inheritance from my mother and try to actually make a living at making games. This is something I had always theoretically wanted to do, but never put actual money on the line for. (Okay, in a perfect world, I'd happily give all my work away for free and live on some minimum guaranteed income, but we do not yet live in such a world).

One of my historically biggest gamedev weaknesses was a lack of artistic ability, so this seemed a perfect thing to put money towards. I could hire an artist, which would not only allow me to make a more commercially appealing product, but would also free me up to focus on the mechanical and writing aspects of gamedev, which are the areas I most wanted to be working on and also consider myself best at. (Any followers that remember my work on ToK may recall me complaining there about how it seemed I spent my time on nothing but graphics? >.>

This was shortly after Touhou fangames had been given the official blessing to be sold on Steam, and some had already achieved great success there, so this seemed like a good way to create some instant appeal and interest in my game, while working with a franchise that I already loved to death and had written hundreds of thousands of words of fanfiction for (eg: This or that or this other thing)

And so Chronicle of False History was born!

...and yet I somehow still spent most of my time working on art. You see, having never worked with an actual artist before, I underestimated a number of things:

1) I underestimated how much work it would be to find a suitable artist in the first place (though at least this part is done)

2) I gravely underestimated how much of my time would be spent on 'art direction' or 'project management' or whatever you want to call it.

Every sprite that is created, even for canonical character designs, requires making a large number of decisions regarding:

What attack and spell poses it will have (and how to cover the broadest range of signature abilities with just two 'frames', for budget reasons)

Which of enumerable (and sometimes mutually-exclusive) costume details from canon (and fanon) should be selected (and do you have any idea just how many variations there are on things as straightforward as 'the hilt of Miko's sword'?)

Gathering a pile of reference images that clearly detail every element of the character (and action poses) to be drawn (which is also harder than you might think; a lot of art is sufficiently suggestive of details to view without actually being a good reference to reproduce and anything that isn't exactly what I'm looking for risks my artist misunderstanding my request entirely)

Designing alternate-history variants of this character in a way that can be clearly conveyed with minimal costume and color changes alone (as any significant redrawing would cost far more and the cast of the game is so large already) and doing so before the part of the game they would appear in is even written.

Gathering reference images for all of those things

Writing up a detailed description of all the decisions listed above (and often drawing actual diagrams of action poses and projectile overlays that are ambiguous to express with just words) and handing it over to my artist

Waiting a while, then getting sketches back and finding out that there is inevitably a whole pile of things that need changing (either because the artist misunderstood my request entirely - despite all that previous effort - or because an idea of mine looked far better in my own head than it does, or just the usual 'incremental improvements' to something that is on the right track but not quite there - like a sort of collaborative redrafting.)

Spending hours poking at these sketches in an image editor, testing how well individual details resolve at in-game size, how well the action frames snap together, and how I feel about each questionable element. This often extends to (crudely) adjusting and readjusting the position and angle of individual limbs and eyebrows and projectiles that feel 'off' so that I can figure out what I would like her to do with them (and whether it's even worth making her take the effort to do anything with them at all)

Finally, summarizing that feedback into a detailed list of change requests (often with new diagrams to clarify my words) and repeating the last two steps over and over and over again.

Like, she does great work - don't get me wrong. I'm very pleased with the end results and this is just an inevitable part of the process of making something professional. But it does also mean that my original idea that paying an artist would free me up to work on things other than art has been... laughable in retrospect, to say the very least. In fact, it's very possible that a greater percentage of my dev time is spent on art-related tasks than on previous projects where I was doing all the art myself - I just get better art for my trouble (and money....)

This is especially true given that:

3) I underestimated just how much art work I would still need to do completely independently of her

Raven is doing character sprites. These are arguably the most individually important art content in the game, and certainly the ones that give it the most screenshot appeal, but that has left me to do everything else. Which has included:

Figuring out how to make battle backgrounds that passably match the art style of the game (since commissioning enough of these to fill all the locations needed would absolutely blow my budget)

Designing the entire look and feel of the combat screen to mesh well with Raven's sprites while also being something I am personally capable of making (using only cheap/free resources)

Creating all tweened animations and particle effects

Designing every single little UI element that exists in the game:

Elemental symbols

Dialogue boxes

Spellcard icons (and the entire menu design that requires them in the first place)

Combat action menus

Icons to indicate spellcard usability

Spellcard tooltips

Targeting overlays

A turn order bar

Spellcard availability reminders

Font choice for damage/healing numbers, spellcard names,

More cursors that you can shake a stick at

Lots more stuff, I'm sure

And even the completed sprites I get from Raven still need multiple hours of processing each to split them into component parts with sufficient information to re-composite and animate in-game. (If you've ever wondered why my screenshots seem to only involve Nazrin while I've already shown sprites for multiple other characters, this is why)

It never ends!!

...which is a fact that has been extremely draining. Like, it is probably difficult to overstate just how demoralizing it has been to pay this much money and work this hard and long and still somehow be mostly doing art (or visual-related coding) when I naively thought this project would offer some freedom from this after the endless, endless hours I spent doing this for ToK.

And it has also revealed a very tangible (and extremely stressful and troubling) fact about this game's development:

I am going to run out of money before I am remotely close to having a saleable product

When I first laid out plans for this project, I ballparked a modest but realistic budget for the artwork. I chose an art style that could provide pleasing visuals for a very large cast of characters at a cost-effective rate (for a game, at least). I deliberately limited my cast size based upon the agreed-upon cost per character with my artist (and have repeatedly held myself back from various fun ideas because I felt I simply could not afford to make a habit of such things). I studied sales figures for comparable games to aim for a target that had a reasonable probability of sufficient return (or at least breaking even). Game development is always a gamble, of course, but I felt (and still feel) that I made a sensible budget call and it was an amount I was fully able to pay.

But in all this, I neglected to factor in what has been, by far, my most costly development expense: remaining alive.

You see, at the rate my artist is able to produce work, the cost of retaining her is utterly dwarfed by such banal things as food and rent and not freezing to death in the winter. I live about as modest a lifestyle as possible - a one-room apartment, no car, no eating out, nothing in the way of luxuries (I don't even own a cell phone) - but that is still awfully expensive when you have no income and no prospect of it in the immediate future either.

It's a vicious cycle. The less work I get done, the more I feel future financial pressures breathing down my neck, the less work I'm able to get done (due to stress and general demoralization), the more I feel future financial pressures, etc, etc, etc.

And there's a logistical problem even outside of my own stress and anxiety and being damnably human in my need for actual rest: I've spent nearly 10 months working together with my artist and thus have a pretty good sense of how fast she's able to get character art done. And unless something changes dramatically, the time required for her to finish the art assets for the game will be several years longer than I will have any savings left to pay for them - because, as it turns out, hiring an artist is actually a tiny expense compared to merely continuing to exist.

I... don't really have a good answer for this problem and I've spent a lot of time consumed by it at this point. I have faith that Chronicle of False History can be a great game... eventually. But that does no one any good if I can't stay afloat long enough to make it. I've considered pivoting to another smaller-scope game project in the meantime, in the hopes of generating some modest influx of cash that could be used to fund the rest of CoFH's development, but there are a whole slew of reasons this is dicey (not least of which is that small-scope projects have a tendency to not be nearly as small as one anticipates...)

I've also thought about exploring Patreon, but like... I'm fully aware that I don't currently produce nearly enough interesting content for people to just want to throw money at. Tantalizing glimpses of it, perhaps. The promise that in the future I might. But what do I really have to show for this at the moment?

And so, here I am, exhausted by a marathon of work I did not properly anticipate and without the tangible reward I'd expected to have by this point (not a finished game, by any means, but like... much more of one than I actually have). And every month that passes by in which I get less done on my game than anticipated is yet more cash bleeding out of my bank account, like I'm trapped on a badly leaking boat with no shore in sight. I need a rest from all these stressors (and some more personal ones not described here), but when time spent not working has itself become a stressor these days, where can I even find it?

...wow, this sure sounded upbeat, huh?

In any case, I still care a lot about CoFH and have no intention of stopping work on it. I just... need to figure out some way to allow myself to continue to do so without this enormous capitalist behemoth crushing me beneath it.

(I had originally intended to provide more of an overview of the useful work accomplished over these past 10 months here, with mockups showing the evolution of the game's visual design, but clearly that goes into a future post at this point).

[goodnightwatch]

AN (IM)PERFECT COLLECTION

An Horological Psychologist’s Magnum Opus, or How a Lowly Graduate Student Amassed a World-Class Collection of Fine Timepieces.

By: Andrew Lawrence Smith

Part 1

You might think it’s easy to collect watches, but I’ll have you know that even if you’re the richest person in the world, you simply cannot know what to buy and when and where and why to buy it until you have put in an insane amount of work. In some ways it really evens the playing field between the rich and the working class because it’s not about money, it’s about achieving a holistic collection that balances and harmonizes everything from wrist-time to occasion. Collecting is as much of an art as the watches themselves. Some people get lucky, sure, but then again some people win the lottery and if you’re reading this, that is not going to happen to you, probably ;).

Hi there. My name is Andrew and I am a 37 year old PhD student and Jungian Depth Psychology Consultant finishing a dissertation in Jungian & Archetypal Studies and Horology at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Do they offer the horology part? No. I created that after being unable to separate my depth psychological research from wristwatches. This is what we deem a vocational call. When you spend hours observing the least and the greatest of watches under magnification to understand what “fine” means and when you press each watch against your ear to hear every tick and tone made by the watch, you’re just barely beginning to be on the path. My research discusses how timepieces, the wristwatch in particular, might function as a modern mandala, having a real connection to the unconscious archetypal Self, but that goes way beyond the scope of this essay. To understand some of the terms I use, you might need to dip into Jungian depth psychology, and for the most important definitions, they can be found here: http://www.psychceu.com/jung/sharplexicon.html

Many arrive at a collection that fits them by procuring countless timepieces and then throwing them back into the abyss in order to please their peers (fashion watches and status pieces) and have the experience that refines one’s taste, some of which I’ve done, but the serious collector will lie in wait like a dragon observing from atop a mountain of gold; the gold being serious knowledge, in the vein of attempting to acquire an horological and psychological philosophers’ stone. When all variables align—after months and years of reading and discussing and visiting boutiques and second-hand shops either brick-and-mortar or online—only then will one receive the full satisfaction of the perfect watch for them, the perfect complete set, and the perfect price to once again return to one’s perch fully satisfied with the catch/game of a lifetime. Needless to say I will not be discussing the auction world at all. Auctions are for rich people. Although the rich or super-rich should go through the process that I have gone through, they really don’t have to. Their loss. Then again, they hire guys like me to pick out their watches! This is a story for the ultra-conservative (no politics implied) watch collector. The metaphor of the miserly, yet punctilious dragon, represents the foundation of the composition of an horological psychologist. Horology is cool, psychology is cool, but I contend that it is only when the whole process of being an horologist is twinned with the knowledge and experience of depth psychology that one can truly enter into this deeper world of alchemical achievement, understanding, and appreciation.

Put another way, what I have found from studying wristwatches—as they relate to universal mandala symbols—is that the image of the timepiece, especially the wristwatch (in my own psyche) replaces every single religious symbol with a unified and integral symbol of the height of human consciousness and beyond. I’m more than just your average atheist, I am an horological psychologist who has integrated world mythologies into a knowledge and gnosis of being that connects the alchemically perfect timepiece and the supreme meaning of the individual and collective psyche; Jung’s notion of the archetype of the Self, the whole being of the individual. For more on that, you can hold out for my completed dissertation, and in the meantime read C.G. Jung’s “Memories Dreams Reflections.”

The image above was taken by me and is from C.G. Jung’s “The Red Book: Liber Novus.” It is one of many mandala images that Jung created to symbolize the whole Self archetype. A perfect watch on the wrist does not fall short of the feelings evoked through this depiction of presentiating origin: becoming fully integrated into the purest harmony of consciousness.

Part 2

It was by accident, or rather synchronicity, that on the 28th of June, 2012 I found myself attracted to a cheap, skeletonized mechanical wristwatch that was glaringly out of place amid items I was perusing to fill a few needs for my San Francisco apartment. I had been studying Nikola Tesla in depth and was possessed by the genius of his inventions and notions of free electricity. I thought that using/wearing a watch, which would need no battery replacement, was/is an ecologically responsible and very cool thing to do. At $120, it seemed expensive, but I was overcome by a strange feeling of passion and curiosity in the name of the great Tesla (best human who ever lived) and so I ordered it. Full disclosure, I sweat bullets on the MUNI back then thinking someone would mug me for that watch. Now I ride the bus with a Rolex hanging out like IDGAF x). But I digress.

Upon removing the watch from its box for the first time after it arrived at my door, little did I know that I would from that day forward never go another day without enjoying a mechanical watch on my wrist. Case and point, at this very moment I am wearing my Breguet 5327. Thus commenced hours upon days of winding, listening, and viewing the watch under magnification so that I could figure out how everything worked. It might’ve been a poor excuse for a watch, but I could not stop staring at all of the moving parts, which had me mesmerized as if I was flying through the clockwork at the train station in the film Hugo.

Even in this bottom-of-the-barrel movement that had been manufactured in a place with vastly lower standards than Switzerland, I could see motion and beauty that had/has me transfixed on a level that was/is far greater than any basic aesthetic, technical, or functional appeal. I purchased a few loupes—5x, 10x, and 30x—to get a closer look. Since I still have this watch, I do not have to imagine what it feels like to dive into the minute details of every stationary and moving part. I can gaze upon, and through, the synthetic rubies right now and see a universe of possibility in an instrument that is only meant to tell us where the sun in the sky might be at any given moment so that we will know when to perform certain socially agreed upon human rituals. That said, with each of my watches I often engage in Active Imagination (a Jungian method by which one re-members or discovers knowledge sourced from the collective unconscious) and the imaginal entities that animate in my own mind, inspired by the wristwatch, tell endless, fascinating stories.

Two years after encountering that initiatory watch, owning cheap mechanical watches of various designs and complications (my experience of horology exposure 101), I finally took the plunge and bought my first fine timepiece. Now to be fair, I must mention that I spent a lot of time during those years defending my cheap watches as if owning something that costs more than a few hundred dollars US would never be necessary, like some poor souls still do, but eventually I grew up and made the sacrifices necessary to possess something serious. You need a thick skin in the watch world in order to interface with other Modern Day Watch Enthusiasts who are worth talking to. Surviving your own ignorance to become horologically knowledgeable is a noble and brutal journey through the underworld. And as Jung would have it, emerging from this underworld is simply another stage of individuation; an expansion of consciousness improving the abilities and life of the individual.

My first fine watch was the Omega Speedmaster Professional ref. 3577.50 “from the Moon to Mars” purchased on the 2nd of January in 2014. Obsessed with Elon Musk’s dream to travel to and terraform Mars, as a byproduct of being equally obsessed with Nikola Tesla, this was a watch that not only met all of my horological desires but also instantly possessed a multiverse of meaning for me. I imagined that one day I would take this watch with me on a public transport to the Red Planet. Elon wants to die on Mars, and quite frankly, so do I. To me this watch was so expensive (for me at the time) and so perfect that there would never be a reason to own anything else. Again, little did I know that I would be very wrong about that. Enter the “Coke.”

The Rolex GMT-Master II 16710 Coke began to burrow into my mind as I continued to scour the internet for the best deals on fine watches of all kinds. Every single day I was on eBay, Chrono24, watchestobuy, watchuwant, Crown & Caliber, Jomashop, The RealReal… You name it, if the site was selling fine watches, I was keeping tabs. Apologies to anyone I missed. By this time I was reading magazines, blogs, and watching all sorts of videos that were giving me a fairly exhaustive exposure to what was out there and who was buying/selling certain kinds of timepieces in certain categorical brackets. My aim was/is to understand watches on a deep psychological level as they affect the experiences of others and of course my own Self. Not just to be a numbers guy who can flash the timepiecs but say almost nothing meaningful about them. I must confess that it is important to know that, in regards to my personality type (INFP), I operate heavily by listening to my own intuition, and I could not shake this watch; just as I could not shake the Mars. There was more than just the analysis and process of elimination, it was something like a powerfully religious magnetism. The Coke was coming to me in my dreams. I have the dream journal to prove it! However, that’s in my dissertation. On a number of occasions I placed offers on a Coke, but came up with nothing because either a) the seller was shady, or b) I just couldn’t get the price or set where I wanted it. Dealing with watch sellers can be tricky, unlike being face to face with your local AD, so it’s important to be patient and cautious; to not be so excited about that exact watch you’re hunting that you get taken for a ride.

Then finally the day came when I saw a great deal for a clearly authentic Coke (gotta have that paperwork) in amazing condition and I made an offer that stuck. Again, I thought I was going to be done forever. That this was the collection of a lifetime. I had unique Speedmaster that almost no one else had and I had a Coke, which is a highly respected and desired timepiece across the globe. I chose the GMT because I could use it to track 3 time zones more efficiently than on any other timepiece, including world timers, and this came in very handy with all of the traveling and international communicating that I do. Not to mention, the whole design of the watch and color scheme is unusually attractive and versatile (still my favorite Rolex, aside from material objections), but I had not ever seen one in the metal. On a flight home from Cyprus I ran into a guy who was wearing one. I asked him if I could see it and of course he obliged. I have pictures to prove it (see below). I was wearing my Moon to Mars and just knew that the Coke would complete the circle for me. The one thing that I did not really take into account until my own Coke arrived was the size, which didn't register on that agonizing flight back to the US from Cyprus, where I had attended an amazing conference on Time and the Psyche. The conference was a magical experience, but I do not recommend that anyone fly a cumulative 44 hours just to have 5 days on the ground, no matter where you are going.

I ordered my 16710 from 1989 at a great price in pristine condition with papers and when it came, I was bewildered. It seemed so small! Was it actually fake? Did I get bamboozled? Impossible. All of this time I had been looking at huge blown up pictures of the watch and assumed it had the same presence as a Submariner, but there it was, 100% authentic and smaller than I expected. I wanted that Submariner-style crown, big and chunky, but after a while the size of the 16710 crown began to make sense and the tasteful nature of this specific piece became clearer from one day to the next.

I spent so much time examining this Coke, to make sure that it I hadn’t made a mistake, that synchronistically every aspect of its charm became powerfully apparent and intoxicating beyond belief. I had been wearing obnoxiously large watches with Chinese tourbillons that dwarfed even my Speedmaster and now finally the curse was lifting. I saw the light. Praise the gods! Certain watches worked for certain wrist sizes and certain moments in life. Wearing a watch that is too big for you is simply childish and lacking in discipline and taste, just like believing that there is a god that is literally real. This Rolex functioned as training wheels for wearing watches that actually fit properly and looked correct for my physical build and personality type. I remember thinking that the bracelet was too narrow and that the case of the watch only covered the surface area of my wrist, which made it feel like there wasn’t enough watch there, but in reality it was a match made in mythological, alchemical heaven. To this day I still think that the textural design and character of that vintage Oyster bracelet is better than the new 904L iteration and that the 116710 is right on the line of just barely being not too big. Unless you’re deliberately trying to be a clown, a dinner plate on the wrist is no bueno.

In all of my idealism, I thought that the Coke and the Mars were going to be my life companions, but alas we never really do finish growing and developing. Especially when we finally meet that special someone! Enter the Kwan.

Part 3

It was my great fortune to synchronistically meet (a story for another time), date, and ultimately marry my wife, the magnificent Jane Kwan, who for better or for worse has supported me through this transformational journey that is watch collecting. She was kind enough to be fascinated at first, and is now at least tolerant, but when I began to show her how you could actually store value or even potentially make a little money with the acquisition and sale of certain timepieces, she started to pay attention. Chinese people, like those of my Jewish heritage, love a reliable investment opportunity. I made it my goal to abandon hunting “good deals” on a wide range of watches and began hunting the exact watches that I would personally want to own and wear (not just stick in a vault), but only if the price was extraordinary or unusually fair. The Internet has made this relatively easy, if you’re willing to put in the time, and so I scoured the entire visible market for what I felt would be the perfect watch. Long story short, I discovered and then began to obsess over and follow/hunt the Patek Philippe Calatrava 5153G-001. Believe me when I tell you that I have written many pages about why this watch is, to me, the perfect dress watch, if not the perfect watch all around, aside from not being as durable as a Rolex, but again I digress. To be honest, this watch was my holy grail (a subject that I have expounded upon in other places as possibly the single most abused horology term aside from “in-house”) and I thought that I would never get to see it in my lifetime.

One day I found the Calatrava for sale online at a price that was unbelievable. My wife is almost painfully patient, and so we watched the piece sit on the website for nearly a month, while I nearly fell apart with anxiety waiting for her to make a choice. In the end, her instincts were right because the price continued to go down. But I really could not comprehend why no one was buying it. When we made the phone call to see about a best offer, we were able to take the price down even lower and so acquired the watch well below value thanks to my wife’s belief and investment in me, your humble watch hunter. Blasting into the side of this mountain precipitated a landslide to follow.

Not long after that my wife wanted something that she could wear every day. I had been hunting the Rolex Datejust 116234 with black dial, because it is my favorite iteration of the DJ and was able to find that watch well below value also. I thought it might be a bit large for her, but when it arrived it was a perfect fit at 36mm. While the watch is very cool, and occasionally I’ll sneak it away from her to wear it for a little while, it doesn’t make the cut for a perfect collection for me. I needed my watch collection to devour the catalogue of essential horological functions and representations.

However, I was jealous of the almost white-gold looking oyster bracelet and thus I faced a dilemma. The call to adventure was back! I realized that I could own both my Mars and Coke or I could sell them and own the singular Rolex GMT-Master II 116710 BLNR as basically an even trade (at the time), a watch that I still think is slightly less appealing aesthetically than the Coke as it at that time pertained to my personality, but possesses the ultimate in materials ever released from Rolex. I needed some time to think about this. Rolex’s alchemy game had become massively stronger than where it was in 1989. A few weeks later, in Honolulu, I was flipping through one of the tour books and when I turned it over to look at the back, there it was: the BLNR. Synchronicity, as usual, was determined to prevail. Now, I know that this watch is heavily advertised, possibly more than Tag or Hublot if that’s possible, but at that moment I felt like I was looking at a picture of a long-lost friend. The time had come to pull the trigger. I had spent several lovely days swimming in the ocean with my Coke, and now it was time to let it go.

The beach I frequented during my stay in Honolulu. Anyone who has been there knows where it is ;).

A shot of my Coke in Honolulu on the way to get some Spam Musubi!

The rosary bracelt pictured here was acquired in Cyprus, gifted to me by the great Angeliki Yiassemides (author of “Time & Timelessness”), not long before I managed to acquire my Coke. The meaning is strong in this image…

The book in the hotel room demanding that I trade up.

Horology boutiques... Always calling me…

Impossible to find one with black dial in a boutique, I spent some time admiring this beauty in white before that time came when my wife made a dream become reality.

With a heavy heart, I managed to part with my first fine watch and my first Rolex, selling them for fair market prices. Finding the BLNR for a steal is basically impossible, especially if you’re looking to buy within a relatively tight timeframe (aiming to acquire the watch mere months before moving to Copenhagen), so I found the best deal I could with a complete set and as planned basically traded about the same amount of money for those two watches to buy the one BLNR. This was good enough for me and my wife because it is still holding around the same value I invested and I basically had the experience of buying a brand new Rolex with a complete set minus stepping foot inside of an Authorized Dealer, an experience that is not at all important to a watch hunter like me; at least not at this time of life, but maybe later when I have established myself and I can afford that level of treat.

I honestly thought that I wouldn’t be as happy with the BLNR, as with the Coke, because black and red is so much more “me” along with other reasons and qualities (yadda yadda yadda, as Jane is fond of saying), but when it came I was filled with excitement. I opened the box and there it was: my long-lost friend whom I had been missing for the gods know how long. Most call it the Batman, I knew immediately that this was to be my R2D2. It doesn't matter that so many others own it or that the adverts were drilling into my brain. Consolidating to this watch was possibly the best horological decision I’ve ever made because although there was still a lingering color objection, I suddenly had a monstrously better watch to wear every day that met every single other checkpoint I felt one could demand from a daily-wear: 1. 904L steel, which really does feel like wearing white gold, but not quite as heavy a. Something that can take the hits and scratches and will withstand polishing dramatically better 2. White gold hands and indices, which contrast perfectly against the black dial 3. Blindingly bright blue lume, which my wife prefers to her green lume and makes it easy to tell the time under any circumstances aside from maybe actual blindness 4. The blued Breguet overcoil hairspring in the tried and true 3186 movement, something I don't even need to see to appreciate 5. The 5mm comfort link, which is a huge design leap forward compared to the oversized and floppy comfort extension on the original Oyster bracelet 6. GMT aligned clicks, which didn’t really ever seem to line up perfectly with the 16710 7. And most important of all, the very first two-color Cerachrom bezel, completing, to me, the most wearable, useful, and legible timepiece ever made 8. When you consider that this watch not only embodies everything you’d want and nothing you don’t, it’s easy to excuse the blue and simply hope for the red to come through someday 9. Finally, in review, this watch contains the best of every Rolex white metal: 904L steel, white gold, and platinum. As such, it is an alchemical masterpiece; and it has that chunky Submariner-style Triplock crown! Now I like both crowns for different reasons.

People have been calling it the Batman, and I get that. I’m a huge Batman fan and wouldn’t try to change the moniker even if I could, but for me it is the R2D2 riding along with me as I pilot this time machine we call a human body. My consciousness is the Luke inside of this Incom T-65 X-wing Starfighter and my 116710 R2D2 is the choice navigator, always down to take a beating for the rebellion ;).

So now I had a BLNR and a Calatrava shared with my wife (plus her 116234 to enjoy when she isn’t wearing it), completing two out of four watches of a complete set that I call “a holy quaternity.” What more could a man ever hope for? Would I really ever need to break a sweat over more than these two watches to complete the ultimate collection? I even had access to my favorite Datejust when my wife wasn’t wearing it, even though it does not fit the bill for my personal living symbol of wholeness of Self. My little wrist R2D2 and our white gold Darth Vader seemed like a complete set all by themselves. And yet, there was more to come, and rightly so!

My wife and I moved to Copenhagen so that she could attend DTU to earn her MA in Architecture. Being the unreasonably lucky guy that I am, I got to tag along and spend my days exploring one of the coolest (and happiest) cities in the world whilst writing my dissertation on psychology and horology. Several months in, after spending day after day chatting with awesome folks on MDWE, a gentleman put a Speedmaster “Legendary Moon Watch” ref. 311.30.42.30.01.005 complete set in basically new condition up for sale. A discussion about how this boilerplate design was so perfect it’s boring was going around and so at first I wasn’t too keen on the watch. I remembered my Mars and thought that the original Moon Watch was too plain and too common. However, the more I looked at it the more I realized what it had to offer. So many guys were/are going in for that vintage chronograph with the running seconds and 30 minute register without the hour register, which is a great and classic and traditional watch concept/discipline, but I need the hours! Even if it challenges aesthetics and purity. Honestly, purity has never really been my thing ;). Authenticity is a whole other kettle of fish! So then what I realized was, this was not going to be a watch that I spent time looking at during the day. This was a Good Night Watch that needed/needs to be useful in the dark. What better watch for darkness and time writing/recording/chrono-scoping than a boilerplate Speedmaster?!

The price was fair and I could certainly get most if not all of my money back if I needed to sell it, so I figured, why not experience the moon watch as a complete package in all of its boring glory. Sure, it’s no Moon to Mars and the literature won’t come in Japanese with a dedication to one of the world’s greatest artists, Leiji Matsumoto, but it would still be qualified by NASA for space missions and there were lots of other very cool accessories that would be fun to explore. Not to mention the history, which I must say ought to be valued well above just one spectacular artist. I pulled the trigger and the watch and its enormous packaging were at my Danish door within a few days. Upon opening the display box, a feeling came over me that I did not expect. The watch was/is so much nicer than the Moon to Mars, so much more sober and less cartoonish (not really an insult, actually accurate), and it instantly felt like it belonged on my wrist and that it would blend in like some kind of chameleon-like symbiotic creature. Almost instantly I finally knew what this watch was for.

While the Speedmaster had been and is still being used for outer space missions, I would be and am using this watch for INNER space missions. I sized the bracelet, which was a joy because it came/comes with screw end-caps rather than the basic link pins, placed the watch on my wrist and then started the chronograph right before going to sleep. When I woke up in the middle of the night to journal my dreams, I knew almost exactly how long I had been asleep, which really helped me to prioritize my time so that I wouldn’t wake up so much that I wouldn’t be able to return to slumberland. After finishing my journaling, I started the chronograph again, went back to sleep, and when I woke up I could see that I had gotten the eight-ish hours I needed to be rested enough for the day. I’m sure some of you go through the process of sleeping for eight hours without even thinking about it, but my dream life is so active that it is easy for me to lose track of how long I’ve been asleep, so this watch became an instantly useful tool that I can’t live without, just like the BLNR. And because it’s manually wound, I don’t have to stress out the winding train of an automatic chronograph; plus I have the pleasure of winding a watch every morning as the third thing I do after photographing the dial and resetting the chronograph. What a sweet ritual for a watch enthusiast!

My collection was complete. Right? I had my R2D2, which would go with me everywhere during the day, and I had my Good NIght Watch, which would track my sleep intervals and follow me into my dreams. And when it came time to celebrate something special, the Darth Vader (Calatrava) would take its place on my wrist under a cuff. Who could ask for anything more? There was only one slight problem. A large part of my journey after receiving that first mechanical wristwatch was exploring RGM in depth, which led me to Breguet. While I wasn’t sold on the idea of spending big money for a tourbillon since the science shows that it essentially has no real effect on accuracy, there was an element to watchmaking that I had fallen in love with before I even considered owning a fine watch of my own: guilloché.

RGM makes a killer tourbillon (reminiscent of a Speake Marin/Hamilton hybrid), let’s not mince words, only paralleled by the likes of Breguet, Patek Philippe, and Greubel Forsey (honorable mentions, Louis Moinet and Jaeger-LeCoultre - that one’s for Tim Mosso), and does some outstanding guilloché work with their own rose machine/lathe in Lancaster, PA. However, if you’re going to really tighten the restraints on a collection that is meant to be perfect (a true holy quaternity), there’s really no other choice than to go with the godfather of the practice: Breguet; arguably the most important historical figure/alchemist in watchmaking, and the inventor of many components that even the so-called “holy trinity” (lame designation, because Christianity is for people who don’t want to read more books—funny/not funny) still benefit from today. Hence I controversially argue that Breguet completes the holy quaternity and in many ways is still on top of PP, VC, and AP as the senex manufacturer (Harlan MDWE, bless his heart, will of course agree–love you, mean it). By this time I had visited so many boutiques, Tourbillon SF being one of my favorites, that I was saturated with the knowledge of what Breguet and other top-end (not just high-end) watch companies had to offer. Out from behind the stormy clouds of tourbillons and Jacquet Droz and Blancpain and A. Lange & Sohne and De Bethune and Ulysse Nardin came a piece that on any other day I would’ve ignored.

The Calatrava that was/is already in our possession does in fact have a guilloché black sunburst dial, but I wanted something that had/has/emanates the vibrant, timeless energy of 18th century watchmaking tradition, radiating from its finely crafted alchemical masterpiece of a dial and case. I had the opportunity to experience the skeletonized Breguet perpetual calendar tourbillon, but there was something missing even with that watch. Again, size and money are meaningless and relative. It was when I finally had a chance to take a close look at the 5327 that I saw that in any class for any money, this watch had/has it all. It has one of the most extraordinary complications ever invented, the perpetual calendar. It has moon phase, which is hugely important in psychology as a principle of divine consciousness. It has power reserve, which is arguably unnecessary on an automatic watch, but with the layout of the power reserve, moon phase, and date register at six o’clock, the 5327 pays perfect homage to the notorious automatic (perpétuelle) quarter-repeating watch with dumb (à toc) repeater from the late 18th century. This was/is the Breguet to own! Sitting in an office piled with books, including volumes about Breguet and the lovely publication that was created for The Legion of Honor in San Francisco, when they had their Breguet exhibition and lectures, I found myself having a full experience of awakening to the truth of yet another wristwatch. Except this time it was THE ONE. The only... This time, without a doubt, it was THE watch to end all watches, for me. I had done the work. I had read the books, scoured the Internet, been to the boutiques, met or at least studied the people, and in the end the Breguet Perpetual Calendar Classique 5327 presented itself as the answer I was looking for from both the multiverses of horology and psychology: all of the craftsmanship, all of the technology, all of the meaning, and all of the enjoyment from wearing one could ever ask for. Period, paragraph, life mission accomplished. Except, I didn't have the money x). That solution, which came later, was the real blessing.

Before I get into that, on a more somber note, I would like to mention that compared to Breguet’s latest QP, the ref. 5447, Breguet made an unfortunate design decision that is not in keeping with the more traditional layout. Maybe it’s great for marketing, but it does two things: departs from the classique tradition in a way that is unbearably modern, and treads dangerously toward cheapening the name of A.L. Breguet. Swapping power reserve for retrograde month was a particularly unfortunate decision, almost as undesirable as the choice to switch the angle of the moon phase to a less interesting and, I would contend, invasive vertical position. While that dial might be slightly more efficient in terms of the flow of reference and legibility, it is far from an upgrade and has lost that original 18th century charm. I’d wager that Breguet himself might agree. As such, this specific reference, the 5327, continues to wear the crown (pun intended) as what I feel is the greatest Breguet QP wristwatch ever made. That being said, I have dubbed the watch my Holy Grail, together with the Speedmaster, the GMT, and the Calatrava, this completes my personal Holy Quaternity. However, there is always a “fifth element,” intentionally playing on a reference to the film of the same name from 1997. That fifth element (the eternal energy of love and passion) to me is the transcendent holy grail, which is a watch that is so extraordinary and so perfect for the individual that it doesn’t even exist yet. The super rich uber-collectors will know what I’m talking about: a subscription piece that perhaps one’s preferred watchmaker doesn’t even know how to make. For me, in all seriousness, this would be the currently imaginary and absurd Greubel Forsey Quantième Perpétuel Chronograph Grande Sonnerie in a 41mm platinum case. Although, I’d take a GF chronograph, as long as it’s hand-wound. Could it ever possibly get any better than that? I seriously doubt it. At least for an individual like myself.

And so recently I found this perfect Breguet at a ridiculously low price. I mean a price that normally only dealers get from other dealers. This watch needed to be procured. My wife was not about to invest another substantial sum into a wristwatch since she felt that she had already diversified in that direction far enough with the Patek. And so she suggested that I ask my father if he would be interested in making the investment. After lengthy explanations over email and handling some obvious objections that a non-horology scholar might have, he generously agreed to help me make the investment to both aid in my research and hold value that only presents itself once in a lifetime. Due to this generosity and collective cooperation, it is my privilege and responsibility to care for this Breguet as the final piece to my horological individuation puzzle. The mandalas to complete the supreme mandala of the current manifestation of my own archetypal Self have been assembled like Voltron. And now that the collection is complete, my mission is to take exhaustive photographs, engage in active imagination (alchemical hermeneutics) with each piece and the whole collection for my research, and to cook it all down in the vas alembic of consciousness to create my very own horological opus.

Here’s an example of what enters my imagination when I engage in reverie (Active Imagination or Alchemical Hermeneutics) around one of the watches (often including its literature), offering a lingering (reverie) around or daydreaming into the Breguet dial: The guilloché pattern for the power reserve looks like the waves of the sea or the ocean. I am reminded of the image of the solar barge in Liber Novus p. 55. Aptly placed, it is above the other complications, next to the moon phase, which is obscured by a hand carved cloud pattern: the essence of the imagination. So the heavens and the waters, forged in fire and carved into earth or metal. The pattern in the date register is that of a waterfall or descending cliffs, reaching down into the underworld. All of these being supported by the primary dial hand carved rose lathe or rose machined pyramids (clou de paris). The pyramids or sacred geometry of transcendent consciousness. Within the big mandala that is the watch dial are 5 smaller mandalas: the moon phase, which embodies our human-centric lunar story and mythology; the leap year, which makes it possible for me to see the accurate date for the rest of my life without adjusting the timepiece; the month, a centered indicator of the positions of the gods; the day, a de-centered indicator of the positions of other gods; and finally, the date, a concept invented by people who want to control time and other people, to no avail one hopes. Might be best to simply let go of that craving for control, let people be peaceful unto themselves and allow time to flow with the Force of Nature. A dream within a dream... The watch does have Breguet’s signature coin edge or fluted sides, so the watch is to be treated as a sort of super sacred coin. This coinage or coin edge appears to be symbolic of the archetypal pillar: the pillars that held Samson, the pillars of Rome, and the pillars of current modern civilization. However, even after this current human experiment is dust and rubble, the pillars of time will stand as strong as they always have and it will never have mattered that humans were a part of it. A testament from the Antikythera mechanism.

It is possible that I may actually have to sell the Breguet after I am finished with my research sometime next year, unless by some miracle I make enough money to completely own the whole thing by myself, but that is not important because all that matters is that for a time in my life I had, in my possession, a perfect collection. The Holy Quaternity! “For a few minutes, they were mine. That is enough.” https://youtu.be/c9O1VVeMzhc Charade (8/10) Movie CLIP - The Most Valuable Stamp (1963) HD.

It doesn’t matter how it got there and it doesn’t matter if I don’t get to keep it. What matters is that, since we can’t take any of this with us to the grave anyway, I have the priceless gift of the experience. This was a group effort. My sacrifices and investment were/are largely those of time, obsessive research, and unearthing opportunities, which in reality is just as valuable as the money others allowed me to use to assemble this project. From the depths of passion, love, and family, I have been made individuated and whole, for now. Through psychology and horology I have healed myself in ways most people cannot imagine and have had the great fortune to inspire others. Countering the cruel trick of the perpetual calendar complication (never being able to live long enough to see it need an adjustment), I am filled with gratitude for what I have had the privilege to do with the time I have been given. Through bringing all of these elements together, I have found true happiness and may for a time be with this imperfect, perfect collection to remind myself of the cost involved in striving to create something truly special: a genuine opus, if not magnum opus. No one can do it alone. We require relationships to individuate, as Jung said, and at the ripe age of 37, I know that my watch collection and my Self are at last in harmony.

Conclusion

Watch collecting is not just some silly thing men do with their extra money, nor is it about amassing a monstrous volume of different examples for the sake of becoming your own museum. Watch collecting is as much an art as is watchmaking itself or the creation of any sculpture or painting. It requires focus, dedication, precision of craft, and most of all it requires a determination to produce the best possible result from the knowledge that has been gained and the resources—people or otherwise—that have been procured.

I am continuing to work on my dissertation on psychology and horology while figuring out where I want to focus my career from here on out. It seems like Tesla, Inc. is the most logical choice, so we’ll see if they or a watch boutique will have me. As far as this collection goes, what I know is that I will always have my R2D2 because it is the one watch that I can’t live without that can go anywhere: land, sea, air, and space. Depending on what the future holds for me career-wise, I might have to live without the Speedmaster and just use a beater chrono until I rebuild my value strength, since it takes quite a bit more to hold a collection like this all on one’s own. The Calatrava will be here because it is my wife’s investment and my privilege to enjoy as part of our partnership. However, it is worth bearing in mind that none of these things are permanent and that any amount of time being in ownership of the completed holy quaternity set is ultimately more than enough of an accomplishment no matter how long you keep it together. It takes a lot of work to learn about all of these manufacturers and iterations and value propositions. It’s even harder to get clear which ones matter to you on a profound level to the point that you would choose four and exclude all others; especially when considering that owning these watches is a choice that was made at the exclusion of any other products, such as cars, houses, hoarding currency, and any other type of man-made creation. And then to have them all just sort of casually ticking away on your desk is a luxury that very few people will ever know/experience. For that I cannot thank the people who believed/believe in me enough. I am lucky, I am grateful, I have my wife and family to thank for everything, in addition to other friends and enthusiasts who were willing to engage my passion, and I hope that what I have learned and my story will be something that is paying my fortune forward: giving back to the collective community of folks who simply wish to be their best selves; to be good citizens, as Plato might’ve imagined it.

In review and in final conclusion, this is an imperfect watch collection that to me is perfect, in my estimation from the research I’ve done and the experiences that I have had:

It is my personal gnosis, based on my research in depth psychology and horology, that there are two kinds of quaternities (not trinities, because a trinity is really just an incomplete system, lacking the feminine principle, among other things) in the horological universe: 1. The top four watchmakers in the Swiss watchmaking industry a. Breguet b. Patek Philippe c. Vacheron Constantin d. Audemars Piguet 2. The top four timepieces in an individual collection a. The Good Night Watch i. A chronograph worn to bed to time sleep intervals ii. An instrument that centers one’s being between sleeping and waking b. The R2D2 i. The most essential and sturdy of all of the timepieces ii. A trusty companion for all of life’s terrains c. The Darth Vader i. The finest example of elegant simplicity with a touch of violence ii. A watch that possesses a seemingly invisible and powerful Force d. The Holy Grail i. The watch you will wear on your deathbed that will outlast you ii. The QP is a cruel trick because it offers a feature that you will never live to enjoy: not having to adjust the watch for over 150 years. iii. A watch that satisfies one from ever wanting to buy anything better, for now ;).

Quick note: I’ve mythologized part of this collection with Star Wars metaphors because that is the best story I grew up with: the futuristic mythological vision of Joseph Campbell only barely understood by George Lucas (as is evident in his prequel trilogy), based on his seminal “The Hero with a Thousand Faces.” One could easily substitute other similar archetypes for the designations that I have commandeered. Whatever gets you there. It’s all imaginal, but inarguably objective in terms of the archetypes.

As for the selected manufacturers, my opinion here is highly controversial. Breguet should be at the top, Swatch or no Swatch, because Breguet is the Grandfather of all of these other innovators. A Breguet watch lacks nothing in quality and discovery that these other companies are engaged in and in fact, in addition to the legacy/pedigree/history of invention, Breguet is still making timepieces that exceed the expectations of any connoisseur. Every little detail is given the utmost care and contemplation. This does not, of course, take into account watchmaking in other regions. Germany, A. Lange & Sohne in particular, is making watches that appear to be exceeding even the Swiss standards of excellence. This also does not take into account even conceivably more exciting independent watchmakers and inventors like Greubel Forsey, Roger W. Smith, nor even the late George Daniels.

Final thoughts, for now:

There’s a point at which, once you’ve hunted your favorite watch for it’s best price, you stop thinking about what the watch is worth and you begin to think more in terms of what the watch is. For example, I could stand outside in shorts and a t-shirt sipping a beer while admiring a watch that retailed once for $65-70k, but what I’m really thinking about is, 1. how does it fit my wrist? 2. how long will it last? 3. when will it need service? 4. how legible is this dial really? 5. do I like the weight and the fit of the band (strap or bracelet)? 6. could this have been designed better in terms of how it handles a diverse set of lighting situations? 7. was this really the right choice for the lug length? Cheers, Marc Goldberg ;). 8. could the moon phase have been tooled to be more accurate. 9. why isn’t the power reserve exact? 10. Are there any flaws in the guilloché? I’m looking at you, FPJ! 11. Why did they design the clasp like this as opposed to the Patek clasp method? 12. And sure, this dial is amazing with all of the guilloche patterns, but I can’t really see them without magnification because a) I’m getting old and my eyesight isn’t what it used to be and b) the beauty and contrast is only apparent under certain lighting, which makes the dial look washed out at all other times; not nearly as aesthetically pleasing as the Patek, which always looks good even when its sunburst guilloché pattern disappears into the black. 13. However, the most important question of all is four-fold: a. what did/does this watch and the work mean to the watchmaker? b. what did/does this watch mean to the manufacturer? c. what did/does this watch mean to the boutique collective? d. and what does this watch mean to the consumer in every sense: aesthetically, spiritually, historically, and depth psychologically?  

What’s next?

There are many watches that I still find attractive and many watches to come from the various great houses that might cause me to fall in love with one watch more than another, but to be honest I seriously doubt it. I mean, the only watch I want more than my BLNR in its category is a Coke version. The only watch I want more than my Speedmaster in its category is another Speedmaster of far rarer origin and pedigree, a vintage example maybe or who knows. As far as the Patek and Breguet are concerned, there are no better iterations of those watches and there never will be. Finally, for the ultimate grail watch, I believe that it has to be something so amazing that it doesn’t even exist yet. It has to be a dream or a fantasy that one chases and pines over until one’s heart is so broken that one cannot even leave the house without wishing it was either already on the wrist or to finally acquire the watch. As mentioned before, for me, that would be a Greubel Forsey QP chrono with moon phase and grand sonnerie; or yeah, I’ll simply take a GF chronograph, because that is what would replace the super boring yet perfect Speedmaster. Yes, the only thing that will replace the Speedmaster for me is the currently non-existent, fantasy hand-wound Greubel Forsey Chronograph. Sadly, as far as I know, it’s just not going to happen and that hurts me deeply. I want, after I’ve amassed an impossible amount of wealth near the end of my life, well beyond having had the opportunity to help others, to fund what I believe to be the greatest wristwatch ever made and while I may not be the man to do it, it is the fact that I want this for the whole of humanity and my Self that I put this energy out into the world and wish it will happen to someone someday. What you buy is a vote. When you make a purchase, it casts a ballot. I vote for fine horology all day every day. Everything else is an accessory to horology and life, even psychology and fancy electric cars, in spite of my obsession with Tesla’s inventions and values.

The argument could be made that this is not a perfect watch collection because not all complications are represented. For example, I do not have a minute repeater, much less a grande sonnerie. To that I say, I’m not dead yet. At this time of life I can still see (you know, literally, with my physical eyes) and there is this amazing thing, lume, you’ve heard of it, that makes it possible for me to tell the time in the blackest of darkness, so sure, I would love to own a chiming watch, but they’re not only way out of reach, but I don’t have any real use for them in the same way that there is value and use for the watches that I have selected (see what is of value and of use in Liber Novus). Will I ever own a QP chrono minute repeater grande sonnerie, with all of the bells and whistles like power reserve, moon phase, and sunrise sunset and equation of time someday? I certainly hope so!

P.S. Synchronistically, after finishing this essay, I went downstairs and found this puzzle to solve for my horological and mildly intellectual enjoyment :).

Okay, I swear this is it:

Some might ask, “so then what are your values, exactly, spending all of that time, and yours and other people's’ money, on wristwatches?” Don’t you have a job, a house, kids, a car, money, etc.? The answer is this: 1. I’m courting the job that I want to do until my heart stops: Tesla, a watch boutique, or something like that. 2. Having a house is not important to me, but maybe someday we’ll have one. Until then, my time and value will always be dedicated to horology in some way/shape/form. 3. Kids are just more people. People die. Watches are forever. 4. Cars are for suckers, unless you own a Tesla or a really sweet mechanical car, as is essentially the same case with watches. I ride a bike, and not a nice one, a cheap one, because I’d rather spend the money on timepieces.   5. I’d rather have the watch of my dreams than any amount of money. Money is just an imaginary number. The right watch is an instant and immortal best friend. a. To further make this case, look at the gentlemen at auction who are spending more more money with reckless abandon to own the perfect watch for them. Money is essentially meaningless outside of holding value to acquire goods and services. A watch is a deeply psychological and spiritual enterprise for those who really get it, and so it makes sense that one would spend it all to acquire the ultimate alchemical composition that bridges one’s “I” with the Self archetype—via an horological mandala—through the chain of watchmaker, to manufacturer, to dealer, to owner; or as Patek Philippe would have it, caretaker.

Thank you for reading.

The super sacred Holy Quaternity in all of its gorgeous horolgical glory!

[irena-tischenko]

Endless Self-Similarity

We shall make it clear that what is anomaly and disorder from one point of view is nevertheless a necessary element of a vaster order, and an inevitable consequence of the laws governing the development of all manifestation. Let it be said at once however that this is no reason to submit passively to the disorder and obscurity that seem to be triumphing at the moment, for were it so we should have nothing better to do than to remain silent.

Rene Guenon, The Crisis of the Modern World, 1927

Chaos, in the broadest sense defined as a state of absolute disorder of a system or a lack of order.

BEGIN with basic statements, we learned: while making attempts to define any abstract items or revise the term, we should consider unobvious constraints of our thinking, invisibly bringing with existing lexical and sensing tools of comprehension.

We remember, that human mind operates with a very narrow spectrum of humanity-mastered tools, intent to improve world` knowing and understanding process. Our vision and world-describing mechanism also limited with these.

Any search (either searching a precise definition of the phenomenon or the searching another problem-solving solutions) in the circumstances of limited resources is directed to the subjective value and easiness of usage. As an aftermath, most part of the meanings and thoughts, created by humanity, never goes to the open space of pure search, being bound with hard-to-define conventional semantic constructs, such as a “benefit”, “efficiency” and “optimal”. Also, we can’t avoid huge amount cognitive biases.

Therefore, any research we have to start from observing instruments of research, after that goes investigation of the personality mindset to define it operation principles and try to predict restrictions.

This idea can be seen as another way to find a mind state, closed to state of pure perception, but our horizon is much further: we are looking for quantifiable constraints of our mind just to stop keeping within certain limits.

Evolution is I am

Our ancestries through evolution, in difficult conditions for a long time. We are the offsprings of the branch of successful apes, which learned and teach kids how to survive from the beginning of time and brought to the world the improved samples of new people.

Among existed apes we are the best.

We are placed on the top of world just because we are really good at two things: looking for a new and effective ways of getting profit. We all have a powerful pimped compass inside, always showing us the direction of thinking, common for all primates: body comfort, food supply and reproduction.

It still works well, but it’s already not enough for two reasons: world was changed and the way it is was changed.

An old-fashioned profit-looking compass is useless and even harmful already. At Mark, Mask’s and Brin’ era, idea of upmarket consumption is a very wasting time. For people of first-worlds with their sufficiency and fullness, involved in various well-payed useless job paradigm shifting is not necessity, and they probably noticed changes just when Buzzfeed will make another post about it.

At the same time, some young evangelists of a brand-new way of consumption, show that life doesn’t consist of profit, as we used to consider.

There are some people with an unfamiliar and weird life mode, who often paying bills in amount of a small country budget and at the same time wearing cheap watches and humble shoes.

And at the same time old hat newspaper owners, who stop to create classy things foregoing century, still believe in a power of fucking hundred thousand fashion shit, trading with paparazzi shoots leaks, and drink everywhere anecdotally expensive whiskey, trying to remember, what the bloody reason to continue that lifestyle, despite the never-ending open as-a-day miracles of new world which lay to them all last decade at minimum.

Leandro Herrero wrote about that:

“Corporate life lives in a bubble. We may not want to admit it, but we do. We think that the forces upon us are the invisible hands of markets, of course the political life, and our own internal capability of producing the appropriate products and services.”

Those pretenders will gone to the boat last ones, and we have no idea, how they will promote their lifestyle in a society, where, for example, possession will be a burden, weighing on the life of common people.

The same new dimension of profit we listen from neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris in his TED lecture, where he did reflect, how to profitably use one's time and rethinking our well-being in a larger context:

«In fact, the endurance of religion as a lens through which most people view moral questions has separated most moral talk from real questions of human and animal suffering. This is why we spend our time talking about things like gay marriage and not about genocide or nuclear proliferation or poverty or any other hugely consequential issue. But the demagogues are right about one thing: We need a universal conception of human values.»

But let`s forget about someone else ignorance, and observe our own.

For the convenience of pure knowledge

Curiosity, as a thing – is a insatiable hunger, and everyone, who got the Socratic understanding of knowing-nothing, and want to change it to go further to look at the world as is, putting out a fire with gasoline. If you curious, you at the same time unable to stop looking for the right questions and asking them, even every smarty dude from Youtube manifested it out every corner till you go away with loathing.

Even thou.

Again, according to Socrate, who describes a knowledge (epistêmê) as ability to know the real as it is, we come to the risk to come to the on-bounding perception concept. And again, we just looking for a way to avoid most part of mistakes, bounding our common-people consciousness, with trying to avoid them without buzzing with certain supremacy about fucking changes in the world.

We care about keeping interesting for the world and coming to the sort of comprehension.   

According to Aristotle, human beings have a natural desire and capacity to know and understand the truth, to pursue moral excellence, and to instantiate their ideals in the world through action.

Does it means we don’t need to start a curiosity of fire with a bit of a knowledge? Does it mean no one need pushing ourselves to know? Does it means we just need to figure out, what exactly we are interested in and the most pleasant way to complete understanding?

We offer to start from the simple task: try to watch a life without gravity to the food- and sex-related items. Usually the next sequence helps: а) managing the inner primate’ behaviour, b) removing ape-shaped components, c) organizing a personal mindset: regular classification system, prioritizing system, decision-making and problem-solving mind systems.

Then, if you not amazed with a single idea of moved out from mindset as more as possible disclosing profit-oriented decision rails, probably you interested to observe, how around system looks without them.  

Main exploration tool

If you don’t really scared with previous paragraphs, let’s talk about next personality-scratching steps. Human development determined by consistent usage of certain tools for creation other tools.

Complex instrument for understanding the world embodies some ideas ​​multiply elementary instruments.

As soon as ape has measured the first item, all items that way or another turned into measuring equipment for further researches.

We consider the perception (or in certain sense a mind) as a main exploration tool on the earth, though neuroplasticity as a main condition for the learning.  

There are no things more important, than mental ability to change, or “reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life”. Neuroplasticity function is the major requirement for a long-term surviving on the surface of our planet, what we are talking at the beginning.

So, as soon surface has changed and everyone knowledge demands has changed, maybe one time you’ll find an hour for pure thinking?  Or even find a two minutes to talk about new North for our profit compass?  

In current moment observation tools actually has become complicated enough to led to discover human’s evolutionary determined desire to revealing regularity, which oriented to identifying patterns and drives us there.

Pattern-watching and Pattern matching

Human survivals are pretty good in both, and this fixed desire to play “Find the similarities” game after all these years of knowledge evolution bring us a knowledge about special pattern form – fractal.

Usually it defined as a similar consistent patterns (the whole object has the same shape as his one or more parts); without going into the mathematical definition, it can be described as an object, exactly or approximately coincides with a part of himself.

Not so long time ago the concept of a fractal or self-similarity concept, received the status of a clear mathematical construct and bring the names for many objects and phenomenas, which have been described before as an "chaotic" and "formless".

That new way of describing the world made many bulky structures and meanings comprehensible – particularly, we’ve got an ability to represent graphically the iteratively built fractals.

Hey, aliens! Come here, we’ve got a new measurement instrument and need to observe you!

So, as soon as we’ve reached a fractal domain, and immediately goes to effortless juggling with senses, unfeasible before, and directed a human thought to the completely different level of understanding of the complexity of consistency. Rethinking of entropy, they says.

And – a new angle for the world view.

Some scientific theory consider the universe as a set of never-ending fractals. This phenomenon based on a simple idea: the infinite variety of figures can be obtained from relatively simple constructions with only two operations – copying and scaling.

Appearance and further spreading through the collective mind different recognizable forms of self-similar structures and has led to the raise the research interest, careful consideration and studying various fractal forms, placed humanity far beyond comprehension limit.

The process of implementation self-similarity principle into the sciences was pretty rapid: if person enquire it anywhere one single time, it has led to the fractal form recognition everywhere.

If the new regularity was noticed before, we can observe it and find it in any place, wherever we focused: in the nature, in the abstract ideas, in the space, in the whole world.

The human itself and human activities are the fractal, human brain is a fractal, human development is a fractal, and so on.

A linguistic expression of this principle and it rules has the same number of variations as the numbers of options for assembling the Rubik's Cube, and most of them has unclear forms, hard to understanding for non-specialists. We prefer next two: “self-similarity comply the self-similarity principle” and “fractal principle comply per se”.

Here is another application of the a fractal algorithm: humanity stands at the right point to start observation for it selves and particularly for it development process.

Developing system usually coexisting with increasing of system complexity, the emergence of advanced structural concerns and extending the phenomenon calibre and the irreversibility of changing.

Among simple human concepts irreversibility presented the main characteristic of the time. But since we already know that a fractal principle going through the our universe at all levels from micro to macro, and that problem definition revision can change the result of the research, it's time we go back to the beginning of this text: Chaos defined as the state of absolute disorder of a system or a lack of order.

Let’s move the constrains of an “absence order” paradigm and transform the definition into the more tidy and hopeful form: Chaos is a state of the system, which order we have not discovered yet.

                                                                 ***

[nameless-articles]

Nioh: The Right Game for the Wrong Time; but really a discussion on how we should talk about games and what to keep in mind when engaging with video game criticism.

I played Nioh (2017) recently, which you can see on my YouTube/Twitch (shameless plug), and I had some mixed feelings along the way. I enjoyed my time with the game, even if it was a bit frustrating at times. However, any time I wanted to criticize or point out something I didn’t enjoy, it was often accompanied with a comparison to a lesser known series by a small developer named FromSoftware. While I’m sure my viewers got annoyed by this, in the moment of playing it was the easiest way to acknowledge my gripes with the game with another game, but I wonder if that is the best approach to critiquing a game. This piece is about my feelings towards Nioh, but I also want it to be a critique on how we, as game critics and players, tend to criticize games. And let’s just pretend that my last article wasn’t over a year ago, k thanks.

Nioh is a good game, but maybe I should say a little more than that while I have you here. I have never played any Koei Tecmo games, so keep that in mind as I talk to you about Nioh. While streaming, someone pointed out how it reminded them of Ninja Gaiden and how they were interested in this game based on that alone. I only mention that little anecdote to comment on how easy it is for people to think about other games when we are looking at or playing another one, and how simple it is to give the reader some background context.

Of course, people don’t just do this for games. Just about everything in our life is in a constant state of relation, positive or negative, with some other aspect of our lives. It is not enough for a game to be good, it must be good in comparison to other games that we’ve played. Likewise, this piece of chicken I’m pretending to eat must not only be good, it has to be better than the piece of undercooked Church’s fried chicken I ate in a trailer in fourth grade, and so on and so forth.

I’m not here to say that comparisons are bad to make, in fact I started this piece by acknowledging how frequently I compared Nioh to FromSoftware games. Comparisons are an easy way of conveying our pleasure/displeasure with a certain process, however the ease with which we can produce comparisons is not to be mistaken with calling it the ideal basis of criticism.

“[Asking developers] to change such fundamental elements of the mechanics is not examining the game for what it is, choosing to examine it for what it isn’t or based on an experience the game does not seem designed to give.” - Me in my Sekiro article (found here).

While I’m not the best at following my own advice, I still agree with my assertion that assessing experiences for what they aren’t can be a recipe for disaster, or at the very least dissatisfaction. When I compare Nioh to something like Dark Souls, I am drawing from a pool of knowledge that may or may not be the same as another player. For someone playing Nioh without any previous Souls experience, such comparisons are almost pointless in describing the experience of playing the game, and I envy that reality because it is not easy to divorce yourself from previous experiences when assessing a new one. It may be impossible to do so and may actually prove to be a disadvantage of one’s criticism. Let me elaborate by going on a tangent for a second.

The Tangent

I hate tutorials. After fifteen years of playing games each with their own spin on how to teach players how to play, I am over them. Especially when now more than ever games all control about the same, and the ones that don’t control like the rest are unfairly maligned for doing so. So when a game feels the need to tell me how to play, I can’t help but roll my eyes knowing I’m about to go through a process that takes minutes from my life I’ll never get back, only to figure out how this flavor of third-person right-analog-controlled-camera left-analog-controlled-movement feels in comparison to the countless other games that feel just about the same. Nioh is kind enough to grace you with not one, not two, but essentially three different versions of a tutorial in a game that took me about thirty hours to beat. You have the opening section in England, the always accessible Dojo in the mission select screen, and the very first mission all treating you like it is the first time you’ve ever played the game. Of course, none of these teach you about the more intricate mechanics and passive abilities you can get throughout the game that, in my experience, cost me more time understanding their stat bonuses than they actually ended up being useful in gameplay (a bit more on this later). 

Tutorials are difficult to manage because on one hand you want to give the player just enough to get started, but at the same time you don’t want to risk under informing your player such that the tutorial gives them what they could’ve already assumed from an ad. This is only the case for someone who plays enough games to feel they can make an assumption, and oftentimes it's important to keep in mind that every game is potentially someone’s first game. What may come across as a hindrance for someone who regularly plays games is almost necessary for someone picking up a controller for the first time. The question(s) then becomes, from which point of view should your criticism come from, how much of that criticism should be contextualized for the reader, and what is a reader to do with that information? I’ll use Nioh as an example because these questions can lead to other interesting points of discussion that extend outside the game itself.

Which point of view should your criticism come from?

When criticizing a game either in writing or in a conversation, there’s hardly a reason to play devil’s advocate (please take this advice outside of games as well). While yes, it can be interesting, maybe even fun, to tease out other points of your argument by engaging with a point of contention different than your own, to play devil’s advocate is to engage with those views as if they are your own, when that is never necessary. It is enough to acknowledge that such a point of view reasonably exists (that is, it is a view held by a large enough group of people to warrant using your precious brain power on) and then engage with the idea from there. However, anyone’s best argument is going to come from the one they truly believe, justifying it as such and engaging with dissenters keeping in mind how they perceive the situation. In short, if you have experience playing games, then it makes little sense to pretend that you don’t. And if a game conjures up a similar experience to another game, and you can point to mechanical similarities to prove why you feel this is the case, then it makes sense to do so. That said, the process of comparison shouldn’t be used to undervalue how a game is different from another. For example, it is not enough to only say that Nioh has much more number of mechanics, consumables, weapons, and armor (as far as getting an endless amount of stat variation is concerned), and as a result it is better/worse than other games like it. One could look at all the additions as a positive, proclaiming it gives the player much more freedom in tackling the enemies, while someone else could see it as a negative, proclaiming that all the excess of mechanics leads to a bunch of unnecessary thought a player has to give to mechanics that only affect how quickly an enemy’s health bar depletes. Both are valid interpretations of the game’s mechanics.

From my point of view, the immense control players have over their movement, far more than anything possible in any of FromSoftware’s offerings, means you never really have to engage with most of the mechanics except for levelling up and swapping out gear for something of higher defensive and offense stats. While it’s also true in Souls that you can stick to a boss’ right side and avoid most damage, the ease of doing so in Nioh renders most of any boss’s challenge mute. Not helped by bosses only having four to six different moves means it’s reasonable for a player in the “right” mindset to learn a boss’s entire moveset. In the end, the myriad mechanical options add extraneous complexity to a combat system that is fundamentally conquerable by doing what you would do in other similar games. 

That said, not all of the changes to conventional souls-like design goes unappreciated. The ki-pulse system makes stamina management a far more interesting affair than anything I’ve ever played. It allows an attentive player to remain aggressive for longer and makes Yokai combat encounters different from others in the game, which helps somewhat in making the combat less repetitive (though a notable lack in differing enemies/enemy reskins can wear down even the most enthusiastic players). Notice, I started this comparison by referring to this game as a souls-like, but none of what I actually said about the stamina system relies on playing other games to understand. No matter the comparison being made, the game discussion needs to center on what is being offered in the game itself, with little to no attention given to the qualities of the other game(s) being compared. A lack of enemy variety is subjective, because underneath that assertion is an understanding that I have played other games with more enemy variety, such that an indirect comparison is being made at any qualitative analysis. On what basis am I saying there aren’t enough enemy types? Surely I am making that statement based off other games that have had more enemy variety under similar constraints (game time, play space). 

A player with a different background may have no reason to consider a game in that terms at all. If the only other game I played was flower, where there is maybe only one enemy in the form of environmental hazard, something like Nioh would have way more enemies than I could ever imagine. With that kind of background, I may even praise Nioh for the amount of enemy variety and not think much of enemy reskins or reusing bosses. For the record, I don’t mind Nioh’s reusing of bosses for side missions and as a way to cap off the experience at the end. Nonetheless, the end game side missions that just put two bosses together in a pre-existing boss arena are not a high point of the game.

Neither of these perspectives are inherently better than the other. At best, we can say one point of view comes from playing similar games while another comes from a set of eyes completely new to the formula. Neither give an assessment more “true” to the nature of the game, because, if I haven’t already made it clear, a game has no nature or critical existence outside of the discussion borne from it. Neither is more accurate, because both describe someone’s experience. The next question is about how relevant that is to the reader.

How much context does valid criticism necessitate?

In short, context could mean everything or nothing, depending on who you ask. Context, in the context of this specific piece of video game analysis, does not so much refer to the context of a game’s release as it does to the gaming backgrounds of individuals reviewing or critiquing said video game. What does the reader need to know about the author to find their criticism valid?

The list of individual traits is endless and, with regards to playing video games, fundamentally useless. For an absurd example, you would not care if the critic ate rice and fish (or if they preferred saying fish and rice) a week before playing the critiqued game, because that should have little ground on their criticism. It is easy to understand the pointlessness of such points of definition, but there are others that warrant a discussion despite them being fundamentally unanswerable questions. For example, must someone play the other games in the series to reasonably critique the third entry of a franchise? Must someone beat the game in its entirety (does entirety mean getting to the end credits or something absurd like viewing every texture and audio file individually after obtaining all the trophies and secret items at max level)? Does someone need to play the game at all? Would any of the criticism I put forth about Nioh be any less true than if I had watched a YouTube video and come to the same conclusion? Should someone that agreed with me on all those points rescind their agreement until they find someone else who had actually played the game? These questions refer to vague lines in nonexistent sand, with infinitely definable answers.

So then is context meaningless? Possibly. For some it may not matter at all whether the critic has played many games, where they’ve demonstrated a cogent understanding of the medium and seek to express that ideology in their criticism. Realistically, most of us don’t think about the context to such a degree. Yet there are articles and discussions about game journalists having trouble with Cuphead’s tutorial and others needing to use cheats to beat Sekiro, and members of the community typing in rage about how this marks the uselessness of such critics. So it’s clear that it matters, at least to some individuals.

I do not use those outraged and inflammatory instances to poison the well of the “context matters” crowd. Because some of the most popular game critics are those who have a history of their likes and dislikes. If I were to give you a review of a game I did not play, most people would tune out immediately, believing that anything I might have to say would be completely nonsense because we don't deem that kind of “uninformed” criticism appropriate. Would watching hundreds of hours of Nioh make me more qualified to criticize than someone who dropped it after the first hour, despite having never played it? For some this is an easy question, but I am not here to pose easy answers. In truth, any number of arguments could be made as to why one of those two would give more informed criticism, and those arguments would be just as subjective and context-ridden as the original question.

Let’s go back to the context of Nioh, and this refers both to the context of Nioh, the game, and of my own experience with it. When I started streaming the game, someone in chat hyperbolically wrote that I would get an achievement for being the first souls player to beat the first boss. The insinuation, which they further clarified, was that souls player often complain that Nioh is too difficult, and they weren’t ready for a game that was offering them a real challenge (not like the fake challenges I had been exposed to up until then). I have countless hours in the Souls series, have played all the games from Demon's Souls to Sekiro, and I did not have much challenge with the game. Other than an optional boss (which is actually two bosses), I never died more than six times to a boss, which is not something I could say about other games in the subgenre. I was always waiting for the game to get as hard as everyone told me it was going to be, and as a result I always prepared myself and nothing ever proved to be as challenging as what I had already experienced in other games. 

Nioh came out in 2017, and that legitimately surprised me. This game came out after Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3. Had this game come out before both of those, and had I played it before playing those and Sekiro, I think I would’ve had a much different perspective on the game. I imagine I would’ve looked at Sekiro a lot less favorably knowing about Nioh, and it would’ve felt less like a unique take on the Souls formula in a Japanese setting and more of a game that was actually taking from Nioh in the way that Nioh takes from its predecessors. Nioh, for the most part, feels like an amalgamation of the souls genre, along with a few gimmicks of its own (which still harkens back to Demon’s Souls). At the same time, the focus on mechanics and Japanese setting does make it better than some of the more middling offerings within FromSoftwares offerings. I would say Nioh is a better package than Dark Souls 2 and 3, which means I am more likely to go back to it more than those two games.

I can’t help but try to imagine a world where Nioh came out before Bloodborne. It would’ve been more groundbreaking and would’ve had less to compare to, though this isn’t always to a game’s favor. As it stands, the game feels like a mechanically refined Souls game with a far more linear level and story progression. For someone that played Dark Souls for the gameplay, Nioh probably stands out as superior to those, but for someone who enjoyed the more exploratory adventure aspects will find this game lacking, as you are far more likely to encounter doors that can only open on one side, and usually never the side you’re on the first time around. 

Of course, this is just one person’s experience with the game and is by no means absolutely indicative of the experience someone else will have. Some readers will be more aligned with the context of one reviewer/critic over another, and the next question seeks to assess how all readers, regardless of experience, might incorporate this piece into their own understanding of games.

What is a reader to do with context? 

When playing a game for the first time, the experience can benefit from initially knowing as little as possible, so the player must slowly construct a frame of reference through which they’ll go on to view the rest of the experience. However, if everyone played things with little knowledge going into it, readers would be left with a wide array of reviews all amounting to the same level of first impressions, especially when people rush to be the first to say something new or interesting about a certain game. The longer a game is out, the more coverage it receives, the more difficult it gets to contribute a new mode of analysis. Thus, a well-informed reader is someone who engages with critics who have similar and different tastes than themself.

Many readers are quick to ignore thoughtful opinions based solely on its central claim. “[Insert reviewer] said this game is misogynistic, and I refuse to engage further with the matter.” Maybe I don’t need to tell you why such a point of view is detrimental to video game discourse, but in case I do: dismissing an opinion without offering your own thoughtful critique doesn’t propagate discourse; instead of ignoring legitimate criticism of a video game you enjoyed, maybe you should complicate the criticism by offering counter claims and examples. I’m not saying everyone needs to have an opinion on everything, because we all know enough people have enough opinions to keep readers engaged for centuries to come. One does not need to argue with a piece of criticism to engage with it. Reading and understanding the criticism in good faith is quality engagement on its own.

Most readers are content with critics telling them what they already believe to be true. I agree, it is very comforting to listen to the words of a journalist, someone with a small semblance of authority in your hobbies, affirming what you already know. But it is important in these moments to also cast a critical eye on those that agree with you, because sometimes it can take another person saying the same sentiments to find points of contention.

Context is important because it informs how the critic is interrogating any piece of art, and a reader mindful of that context is going to help them determine whether they’re coming from the same place. For example, if I know a critic enjoys a certain genre or has exposure to certain games, I can leverage that with my own personal experiences with that genre or those games, meaning I can keep that information in mind as I’m engaging with the criticism. In the context of Nioh, does the reader have experience with the Souls-like genre, does that experience differ from the critics (if so, in which ways does the difference in previous experience account for why a critic might like or dislike certain elements of Nioh like difficulty or other mechanics)? Keeping the differences in mind will help a reader understand why they might disagree with a critic, likewise the similarities will help a reader understand why they might agree. It is also not uncommon for differences to lead to agreement (I like this game because it was easy, I like this game because it was difficult. Both of these statements can simultaneously be true to two different players, and it doesn’t diminish either of their enjoyment or appreciation).

Keeping such context in mind as you engage with criticism and give critique will make you more aware of the intersubjectivity of play at play. This awareness helps you better understand your own biases as well as others, which benefits the overall discourse. I’m not saying you need to engage in a respectful manner, but that you must actively engage with the opinions being expressed.

Conclusion, and the Context of this piece

Most of this essay was sprung from an internal conflict over how I wanted to talk about Nioh. I mentioned that I frequently drew comparisons during my playthrough, and I do not know why. It had to do with the familiarity with going through a level, fighting a boss, rinsing and repeating. It does not take very many games to realize how derivative the entire medium is, though framing it that way suggests that other artistic mediums are immune to formulas and derivation. They are not, but it does not change the fact that having so many games play and feel so similar to each other is a perfect storm for player fatigue and burnout. From platformers, to first person shooters, to third person cover based shooters, to open world sandboxes, to battle royal games, how many of the same kind of game can people handle before they yearn for something wholly different?

Then I thought to myself, every game within a genre is someone’s first game within that genre,  just like every game is someone’s first game. Derivativeness is good because experimentation becomes codified and refined, and we get games within genres that stand out within a genre, making entire new subgenres of their own, as was the case with Demon’s Souls. Different experiences are exciting, but they tend to be unpolished, janky, and often never reach the heights their potential suggests. Which I believe sums up how I feel about Nioh without needing to say how much I enjoyed it.

Nioh would not be what it is without Souls game, any argument to the contrary has an insurmountable amount of evidence to contradict, but that does not mean you must view Nioh under these constraints to understand why it is a great game worthy of your time. Whether you’re a fan of the genre or not, you owe it to yourself to try one that could be the one to change your mind entirely, so long as you don’t expect the game to change your life, as I always seem to hope for.

[entergamingxp]

West of Dead Review — A Breath of Life

June 25, 2020 10:00 AM EST

While West of Dead is subdued in many ways, I find it to be an easy recommendation for any fan of roguelike titles.

West of Dead came about at a particularly great time for me. My Western-themed D&D campaign is on hiatus due to the pandemic, so I’ve been hankering for some more cowboy-themed content. And while I didn’t get all the classic yee-haws and old fashioned standoffs that I wanted, what I did get with West of Dead was a surprisingly deep story on the topics of death and moving on.

In between that poignant story is a decent roguelike game, one that manages to strike a fair balance between narrative and gameplay. Although it is often held back by its own story in areas where other roguelikes succeed due to their lack of one, I still found myself grinding it out much like I have done with The Binding of Isaac and Enter The Gungeon before it, although never to the same extent.

Beginning with your character, a nameless specter wearing a blood-red poncho and sporting a constantly flaming skull, players must advance through the purgatory they are trapped in to move on west, assumedly to find rest. You, along with all the other spirits in Purgatory, have been trapped since the arrival of a strange preacher. In order to pass on from the endless death and resurrection of Purgatory, you must guide your character through the western-inspired layers of this area, find the preacher, and figure out how to resume the flow of spirits west.

“What I did get with West of Dead was a surprisingly deep story on the topics of death and moving on.”

As a narrative-driven title, West of Dead features another uncommon trait for roguelike titles – voice acting. Throughout the game, your character remarks on their current situation as well as the surroundings they’ve found themselves in, and they do so with authentic turns of phrase. I have to give some credit to West of Dead’s writers for this as their main character manages to constantly feel like a grizzled man ripped straight out of an old west town. It only helps more that a majority of the game’s voice acting is done by Ron Perlman, who you may remember from Hellboy, Sons of Anarchy, or as the grizzled voice delivering the mantra of “War… war never changes,” in the Fallout franchise. In this role, Perlman’s delivery goes above and beyond what is expected. Saying that he lends life to this undead character is as ironic as it is true.

While it does have its differences from many other roguelike titles, West of Dead keeps many of the genre’s usual features in place. Making your way through purgatory means shooting your way through procedurally generated rooms in procedurally generated dungeons, each of which has its own style and comes with its own unique enemies. The start of every run is usually the slowest, featuring basic enemies with rifles and low-tier weapons. As you continue deeper, enemies get more varied and your arsenal more powerful to match.

These early levels are also where you’ll find that the game’s cover system is the most important. Upon entering a room in any of the dungeons, you’ll find much of it obscured in darkness, with small pieces of cover scattered around. Making use of cover whenever possible is important since it not only lets you avoid enemy shots while being able to attack, but you also reload your weapons much faster. However, the further you go into the game, the more you encounter melee-based enemies that can easily flush you out.

Outside of cover, there aren’t many options for dodging attacks besides a dodge roll. Unfortunately, the dodge roll only works about half of the time. Bosses and rifle-wielding enemies often shoot two times or more, and performing a perfect dodge roll on the first shot will almost always leave you wide open to getting hit by the second. It’s frustrating to say the least when the game punishes you for dodging an attack correctly, especially when it seems like there are no other options to avoid getting hit.

In most situations, however, it’s fairly easy to come out of a room unscathed. Enemies have two bars, one for health and one for stun. Usually, the stun bar will deplete faster than the health bar, giving you a bit more breathing room. Because of its usefulness in stopping enemies in their tracks, I found myself using every opportunity I could to stun enemies. It’s also possible to keep baddies at bay using ceiling lanterns scattered around each room. The game uses darkness not just to emphasize its grim art style, but also as a gameplay mechanic. Enemies stuck in the dark cannot be locked onto, letting them shoot at you while you can’t retaliate. To combat this, lanterns are located in each room that can be illuminated. This not only reveals enemies but also stuns them for a brief period of time, letting you quickly unload damage before they pick up their rifles again.

It doesn’t always work like that, though. With all the rooms and levels being procedurally generated, I came across a decent amount that were totally dark, forcing me to slowly work my way to the next lantern. I would often be attacked from behind or the sides by an enemy I had no idea was even there. And while losing health in West of Dead isn’t as punishing as it is in, say, Enter the Gungeon, it’s still a pain to get hit when there was no opportunity to dodge.

Of course, this all ties into the underlying link between most roguelike titles – RNG. West of Dead runs depend on RNG almost as much as they depend on the player’s skill. You can easily start off on the wrong foot in a run or have fortune swing out of your favor later on. However, there are some things that the game leaves up to random chance that shouldn’t be, namely your starting weapons. Each run in the early game starts you off with just two weapons, and they’re usually hot garbage. The most common combination of guns I’ve seen is a farmer’s shotgun, a single shot, and a musket, which takes a while to load up. Working around the limitations of these weapons makes the early game much more difficult than it ought to be, and encounters that should be easy end up deadly.

Thankfully, weapons aren’t limited to just those two. They generally come in three flavors; slow loading, long-range rifles, fast-firing mid-range pistols, and heavy damage dealing shotguns. In my time with the game, I’ve found that rifles aren’t exactly the best option in most scenarios – they take a while to reload and a fair bit of time to even aim accurately. Compared to pistols and shotguns, which can both be fired immediately at enemies, rifles aren’t that useful.

Progressing through the game means unlocking a wider variety of weapons and items to use. These weapons often come with their own status effects that make them even more beneficial than their base counterparts. For instance, one of my favorite weapons is the Freezer, a pistol that slows enemies down with every hit. Unlocking these takes one of the two currencies in the game: sin. It’s an uncommon drop from enemies, and at the end of every floor, you have to hand over all the sin you’re carrying to a witch, who in turn unlocks new passive and active items for you, along with weapons.

Sadly, that’s about as deep as the weapon and item systems in West of Dead go. There are no crazy synergies between items, no overpowered builds, or anything like that. The game does a fantastic job of making your character feel vulnerable, but I could never find a reason for that. One of the main reasons why I enjoy roguelike titles is because I’ll eventually have a run that completely breaks the game. It’s the dream of every person who’s played a lot of Gungeon or Binding of Isaac. We want to shoot giant, screen covering bullets that kill bosses in a single hit. Simply put, that kind of thing just isn’t present in West of Dead.

“I would easily recommend West of Dead to any fan of roguelikes, with the caveat that it certainly won’t be the kind of game you’ll sink hundreds of hours into.”

In a way, lacking that kind of over-the-top gameplay is good for the game. Everything about it is kind of subdued, from the bleak, dark art style of every level to the haunting-yet-enchanting music that plays as you wander through the halls of Purgatory. The more I unraveled the mystery of the game’s character – who they were, who the preacher is, how they both ended up where they are – the more I felt that the game’s restrained gameplay was appropriate.

After my time with it, I found West of Dead to be a fine roguelike. It offered enough weapon and enemy variation to keep me interested when it wasn’t busy telling the story of a mysterious man of the old west. And when it did tell that story, I was genuinely interested, and not just because I love the sound of Ron Perlman’s gravelly voice. Despite its hiccups and some mechanics that still need work, I would easily recommend West of Dead to any fan of roguelikes, with the caveat that it certainly won’t be the kind of game you’ll sink hundreds of hours into.

June 25, 2020 10:00 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/06/west-of-dead-review-a-breath-of-life/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=west-of-dead-review-a-breath-of-life

[riichardwilson]

A Complete Guide To Mechanical Keyboards

About The Author

Ben Frain is a developer, author and occasional speaker. His blog of 10 years plus is at https://benfrain.com. A UI/UX Technical Lead at bet365.com, his books … More about Ben …

How much thought have you put into your primary input device? Ever considered how much better your interface with your computer might be? In this article, we dive into the possibilities of mechanical keyboards. The different layouts, switch types and even keycap material. Strap yourself in — this will be a deep dive!

About six years ago, a colleague I’ll call Tom, because that’s his name, forwarded me a link to the ‘WASD CODE’; a keyboard focused on the needs of programmers, designed with the help of Stack Overflow’s Jeff Atwood.

I had no idea at the time that there were people actually dedicating themselves to creating keyboards beyond the stock fare shipping with computers. As I read and re-read the blurb, I was smitten.

The keyboard that started an obsession: The WASD CODE. (Large preview)

So it came to be that shortly after, I spent $220 on my first mechanical keyboard. I imagine that many of you reading this, who have never had a mechanical keyboard, will wonder if I was of sound mind. For those that have, they likely understand entirely.

For some, mechanical keyboards elicit the same nuanced fanaticism as typography. Let me qualify that analogy.

For those who get drawn into typography, it can become an obsession. The need to choose just the right font for a heading. The ability to spend hours pouring over the descenders of various ‘g’ glyphs. The endless marveling at the merits of Helvetica.

Others, meanwhile, would be happy to just use Lobster and move on.

Just as someone versed in typography can explain to you why a font makes you feel a certain way or has a particular effect on the reader, a mechanical keyboard proponent can extol the virtues of their keyboard, their choice of switches, their particular layout and materials chosen. Take a look at the breadth of variety on offer.

I can’t tell you what’s so bad about using Lobster, but I’m going to take a shot at explaining why you might want to try a mechanical keyboard and feel a greater physical connection to the primary tool of your trade.

Our Primary Input Mechanism

For decades, keyboards have been the primary mechanisms by which we interact with our computers.

If you spend 8 hours a day working, and maybe half of that typing, for a 5-day week and 48-week working year, that’s 960 hours of typing on your keyboard every year! Despite that sobering figure, most of us just use whatever keyboard is shipped with the computer.

Look down at the grubby, unloved implement beneath your fingers. When was the last time you actually sharpened that sword? How often do you use each of the keys you press? Are the most used keys within easy reach? What about the tactility? How do the keys themselves feel? Is the travel of the keys helpful? Do you wish the travel was greater? Do you wish it was less? What about the sound? Does it annoy you? Does it annoy those around you? Do you have helpful shortcuts to adjust your volume? Skip a music track? Perform an oft-used set of keystrokes? Or what about an easy way to toggle between typing on your computer and typing into your phone?

Mechanical keyboards exist to answer as many of these questions as possible.

What Is A Mechanical Keyboard?

Generally speaking, it’s possible to define a keyboard as mechanical if it uses mechanical switches for each key.

Firstly, let’s consider the everyday alternative to mechanical switches. Typical, inexpensive, everyday computer keyboards often employ rubber dome switches. As the name implies, these are constructed with a sheet of rubber domes above electrical switches. You press down on a key and the dome collapses causing the key to be switched. You lift up your finger a little and the rubber dome plops back into shape and the key is no longer pressed. Rubber dome switches are popular because they are so cheap compared to manufacture. However, they are certainly not the best way of solving the problem of registering a keypress.

Mechanical switches offer a range of tactility unavailable with rubber dome keyboards.

Mechanical keyboards are enjoying a renaissance, which although has been going on for a number of years, is really starting to gain more widespread adoption since being embraced by the gaming community.

Now, before we get much further into this, I feel it’s my duty to be quite candid. I often read people justifying mechanical keyboards due to the fact that they ‘last longer’. Whilst this is possibly true, I don’t ever remember wearing a keyboard out. And you could probably buy a lifetime of budget keyboards and still have change left compared to the costs of a mechanical keyboard.

Buying a mechanical keyboard is not an exercise in sound economics. It’s about finding the best possible version, for you, of a tool you use almost every day. A keyboard that has just the right layout, feel, and aesthetics. Once you have your keyboard, I like to think you will rise every morning chanting the mechanical keyboard owners Creed:

“This is my keyboard. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

My keyboard is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.

Without me, my keyboard is useless. Without my keyboard, I am useless. I must type my keyboard true. I must type faster than my colleague who is trying to better me. I must program things before he does. I will…”

The sheer wealth of permutations when it comes to mechanical keyboards can be mind-boggling. In this article, we will concentrate on the broadest strokes. The considerations we feel are most important to understand if you entertain purchasing a mechanical keyboard.

We will cover:

The Plethora Of Key Switch Types

Arguably the single most obvious distinguishing feature of a mechanical keyboard compared to a ‘normal’ keyboard is the switches.

There are a plethora of different mechanical switches for keyboards. They can be most easily categorized by the physical shape and stem mounting. The latter is the protruding mount that the keycaps attach to. The switch ‘type’ is the defining characteristic of the switch itself — typically categorized as ‘linear’, ‘clicky’ or ‘tactile’.

Physical Switch Differences

Far and away, the most common physical type of switch is ‘Cherry MX’ as well as the now numerous Cherry MX clones.

Historically, due to patents, the manufacturer, Cherry was the only brand able to make switches with their mount system. Now their patent has expired, there are a number of other manufacturers offering comparable and compatible switches for less.

Nowadays, it isn’t necessary to get hung up on getting a board with genuine Cherry brand switches. I’d argue that there are brands being far more progressive and innovative in switch development these days. Kailh is a Chinese brand that not just makes comparable switches for MX mounts with color designations (such as ‘Blue’, ‘Green’, ‘Red’, and so on) to approximate the equivalent Cherry switch (we’ll cover color designations for switches in a moment), but they also produce ‘box��� switches which are IP56 dust and water-resistant, as well as ‘speed’ switches aimed at gamers. These have shorter travel resulting in quicker switch actuation. Hence, the ‘Speed’ moniker.

Kailh produce comparable and often more interesting switches than the original Cherry models. (Large preview)

There are also many other fine key switch types that bear no relation to Cherry — Topre being a personal favorite. Topre switches are designed and built in Japan and give a marvelous tactile feel that some swear by. However, they are expensive and subsequently less common.

If you want a decent idea of the most popular options, take a look at the list available on the Keyswitch guide at the Mechanical Keyboards store.

Key switches — especially Cherry MX and variants — are typically labeled by color; for example, ‘Blue’ or ‘Brown’. Different colors are attributed to different switch types; most typically, a switch that is either linear, tactile, or clicky.

Whilst trying to describe the way a key switch feels in words might seem like an exercise in futility, I’m going to attempt just that regardless.

A linear switch is just like a linear animation, there are no curves, you press down and the resistance feels constant all the way down until the switch ‘bottoms out’.

A tactile switch is more like an easeInQuart animation curve; there is a sort of bump at the top you have to get over and then it moves down like a linear switch until bottoming out. This little bit of tactile resistance at the top of the keypress is what earns them the label of ‘tactile’.

A clicky switch is a bit more simple to communicate. It has a similar kind of bump at the top like a tactile switch but makes an audible click on actuation (or both directions in the case of Kailh Box Whites, for example).

For each switch type, there are differing key switch ‘weights’; that is, how much force is required to make the switch do its thing. Key switch actuation force is often measured in cN units (centinewton). Again, colors are arbitrarily assigned. So, for instance, a Kailh Box Red is a soft linear switch whilst a Kailh Box Black is also a linear but heavier. There’s no real sense to the color designations, simply that Cherry made them originally and now others follow suit.

Now, in a geeky topic, the subject of key switches can take on proportions of geekiness even I get uncomfortable with.

So, in the interests of trying to keep you with me, the TL;DR of keyboard switch types is this: If you are looking for a mechanical keyboard (perhaps your first one), opt for a board with Cherry MX, or Cherry MX compatible switches such as those made by Kailh. Choose a switch type which, at least on paper, sounds appealing. Buy it, and see how you get on.

To offer just a little more broad guidance:

Like the idea of linear switches? Go for Cherry MX or compatible red switches.

If a tactile switch seems like it would be your bag, opt for MX brown or compatible switches. If you can find a good offer on a Topre-based board a Happy Hacking or Realforce, that would be a solid choice, too.

Does a clicky switch appeal? MX Blue or compatible switches for you.

I’m making such broad recommendations because ultimately it’s all preference anyway. However, if you do go for switches with an MX mounting stem, then you give yourself the greatest number of options when it comes to keycaps.

Despite telling you it is all preference, we thought it might be useful to try and describe the differences in the mechanical keyboards switches from first-hand experience.

Subjective Switch Feel

We tried a number of different Kailh switches in a 87-Key TKL keyboard for comparison. We also tried a WASD CODE v2 with MX Blue switches, and a WASD CODE v3 board with Zealio switches. In addition, we also tried the Happy Hacking Professional Hybrid with Topre switches.

Kailh Box Whites have a little click as the key travels down and again on the way back up, a Cherry Blue MX switch just clicks on the way down. Both are pleasant and give satisfying feedback. It’s easy to get addicted to the thick-thock-thick-thock rhythm as you type with clicky switches! However, a loud clicky keyboard is perhaps not the best choice if you work in a shared office space. Unless, that is, you want to exact ‘death by a thousand clicks’ revenge on Bob in accounts for his ridiculous booming voice!

In terms of tactile switches, the Kailh Speed Copper feels like they have a little more resistance than a standard Kailh Brown. The Kailh Speed Coppers felt very similar to the Zealio switches in the WASD CODE board. It would take a real enthusiast to be able to discern any difference in a blind test. If you were to ask me today which switch to opt for as the best ‘all rounder’ I would suggest the Kaihl Brown or Speed Copper, or the Zealio switches. All felt great for typing/coding with the tactile feel providing a nice compromise between feel and volume.

The Kailh Speed Silver switches have similar weight/resistance to the Kailh browns but as they are linear, the resistance is felt all the way down the keypress. The sound is slightly higher-pitched in the Silver than the Browns, and the Copper Kaihls are a deeper sound still.

The Topre switches are different again. They provide a tactile feel that is simply impossible to replicate in a Cherry style keyboard. There is a consistency and solidity to the keys which every keyboard enthusiast should try at some point.

I must emphasize once again that these are very fine margins. Any of these switches are going to provide a level of feedback far exceeding that of a standard ‘off the shelf’ keyboard.

Keyboard Layouts And Sizes

With the touchy-feely issue of switches dealt with, let’s move on to the next wall of acronyms and abbreviations. These deal with the keyboard layout.

Keyboard Sizes

A keyboard layout is most typically defined first and foremost by its size. Going smallest to largest:

“40%” diminutive layout where many keys are doubled up, requiring an additional key to be pressed alongside the desired one. Unless you have a specific reason to have one, I couldn’t recommend this layout for practical purposes;

“60%” typically a normal key layout minus a dedicated arrow key cluster, home/end/page up and page down or function keys;

“65%” compact like a 60% but usually incorporating at least an arrow cluster;

“75%” usually brings in a distinct function row;

“TKL” the ‘Ten Key-Less’ is a more conventional layout, think of a ‘normal’ keyboard minus the number pad section;

Full size; the typical keyboard layout complete with function keys, number pad, and arrow cluster.

For a good feel of the many layout variations, take a look at this guide on Drop.

Note: There are popular layouts that are sub-distinctions of these sizes. For example, the Happy Hacking Keyboard layout, or ‘HHKB’ as it is often referred to, is a layout over 20 years old and originally designed for UNIX users. It remains incredibly popular because it was designed around the philosophy of keeping hands around the home row, something that perpetuates for Vim users today.

The legendary HHKB keyboard has it’s own, oft imitated, 60% layout. (Large preview)

Ergonomic Keyboards

Some people stumble into mechanical keyboards in the search for a more ergonomic keyboard. One area where mechanical keyboards can honestly claim some bragging rights is in the variety of ergonomic boards and layouts on offer.

For example, consider the Ergodox EZ. This keyboard is completely split (albeit apart from a wire connecting the two halves) and enjoys the increasingly popular feature of a ‘hotswap’ printed circuit board. This means that you can easily swap out one lot of mechanical switches for another depending upon your preference. That’s certainly a good thing.

It’s common to start with mechanical keyboards favoring one switch type and then as time goes on you grow to prefer another. This way, you don’t have to buy a whole new keyboard; just replace the switches. The Ergodox EZ is also entirely programmable meaning you can adjust any key to do whatever you like. The layout choices are genuinely almost infinite.

The ErgoDox EZ is an ergonomic split design keyboard with a fully programmable PCB and hotswap PCB. (Large preview)

The ErgoDox EZ’s initial layout is itself, certainly unconventional. There’s not just the split to get accustomed to, the Ergodox EZ also has ‘ortholinear’ key layout, casting aside the staggered key layout which we have become accustomed to (a throwback to typewriters where staggering the keys was a mechanical necessity). Thankfully, the Ergodox EZ also enjoys supporting software that teaches and tests your accuracy and ultimately improves your typing speed.

Regardless of how you feel about the aesthetics, if you’re someone who suffers from a condition such as RSI, such factors are likely to pale into insignificance. As long as you are prepared to invest some time re-learning your typing, it might be the best $350 you can invest in your personal hardware, and perhaps even personal well-being.

Hotswap and programmable keyboards are getting more and more common but they remain largely a feature of ‘build your own’ keyboards. Building your own keyboard is a whole other related topic beyond the remit of this article. But be sure to let us know if that is a topic you’d like us to cover.

ANSI Or ISO

There is also the consideration of regional peculiarities; for users in the Western world this boils down to ANSI (American National Standards Institute), with the straight enter key one row high, or ISO (International Organization for Standardization), typified with the angular enter key taking up two rows of height.

The biggest differentiator in the Western world is the ISO or ANSI layout. (Large preview)

Whilst these might be the most distinct visual differences, they are not the only ones.

However, for simplicity, unless you have a reason not to, it makes the most sense to stick with the ANSI/ISO layout you use currently. Although, it is worth pointing out there are considerably more choices for keycaps and board layouts when it comes to ANSI. More than you would ever want to know about ANSI and ISO layouts can be found on Wikipedia.

Analysing Your Key Presses

At first glance, some of the smaller layout sizes such as 60% and 65% might seem completely impractical. However, you might be surprised to know just how little you use certain keys.

Rather than guessing, you can answer that question with cold hard data by logging your keystrokes for a few weeks. There are a number of programs to do this. I used Loggerman.

Loggerman runs in the background and counts up all your key presses. It then lets you run a report to show a heatmap of where your keypresses actually are. Here’s my own heat map for a three-week period.

Use a key logger to find out which keys you really need. (Large preview)

Despite the image showing a Macbook, I wasn’t actually typing on one; I was typing on a WASD Code v3 TKL. Therefore, if you do this kind of analysis, it’s necessary to think about where the keys you press a lot are on your own keyboard. What interested me looking at that was that whilst a lot of general key presses were around the centre, there are big concentrations on the escape key at the top left, the delete key, nearly top right and the arrow cluster bottom right.

I’m usually writing in Vim these days, so if you’re wondering why the escape key is used so much, it’s to exit ‘insert’ mode. Any developer wouldn’t be surprised to see delete and the arrow keys featuring heavily in my usage though — although Vim purists would berate me for not using h,j,k and l more!

So, what to take from this? If I was in the market for another keyboard, and the honest truth is, I probably always will be, I might think about looking for a layout where the physical distance between my most used keys is less. For example, something like a 65% where the escape key is on the first row and the arrow cluster is nearer to my right hand. In addition, perhaps ideally, have the backspace key (confusingly often labelled as ‘delete’ on Mac hardware, despite the fact that delete should remove characters going forward) a row further down so it’s easier to reach. Or something like the ErgoDox EZ where I can put the keys anywhere I like!

A counter situation to this might be someone who deals with numbers a lot. In that situation, a dedicated number pad would likely make a lot of sense and steer the layout decision that way.

The take away is there are lots of variations on layouts. The likelihood is that there is a keyboard layout that probably better suits your needs than the layout you use currently.

Case Construction And Connectivity

The majority of mechanical keyboards are wired. Whether that is USB-C, or Mini-USB, there is a wire going from board to computer.

However, if you switch devices frequently, or travel a lot, messing around with cables is something you don’t have to put up with. Many of the well-known mechanical keyboard brands such as Filco, Matias, Corsair, Ducky, Atom and HHKB all have wireless variants.

When it comes to case construction, the two common materials are aluminium or plastic. Like most choices, there isn’t a right or wrong, just a preference. Although wireless boards tend to be plastic to save weight and improve signal from the Bluetooth controllers.

Things that are genuinely useful to consider though are boards that make some accommodation for cable location. For example, if your nearest USB port is on the left of your computer, it might be a pain if the keyboard’s port is on it’s right side. Some keyboards have multiple ports. Some, such as the WASD mentioned at the outset have channels built into the case so you can route the cable however you like. That’s a feature I don’t see often enough from other brands but I certainly miss it when it isn’t there.

Cable routing is nice addition, helping to prevent excess cable across your desktop. (Large preview)

Aesthetically, there is a wider choice of case colors in aluminium with even cerakoting and electrophoretical coating an option. But as you might imagine, with great beauty comes great expense.

Feast your eyes on the RAMA Koyu. It’s made from a single piece of solid brass, hand polished to a mirror finish! No eating crisps at your desk with this keyboard!

If they hadn’t already sold out, it could have been yours for $1000, although keycaps and switches are extra!

RAMA is to keyboards what Rolls Royce is to cars. How about a keyboard made from solid brass? (Large preview)

Keycaps

One of the biggest draws of a mechanical keyboard is that you can easily swap out the keycaps for a different set. As we discussed in the section on key switch types, the most popular switch type, when it comes to keycaps, is ‘Cherry MX’ compatible. Therefore, by far the most ubiquitous keycap mount is Cherry MX style.

However, within the realms of the MX mount connection type there are a great many options. There are choices in terms of materials used, key profiles, and legend marking method. Let’s look at each of those.

Here are some images of popular key profile types:

SA

These are quite high keys and enjoy a sculpted shape down the rows (if you were looking at the keys side on).

“Lime” is a double-shot keycap set in SA profile made by Signature Plastics in ABS plastic. (Large preview)

DSA

DSA are a lower key and although they have a slightly curved top to each key like the SA, they do not have a sculpted shape down the rows.

“Ferrous” is a keycap set by Signature Plastics made in PBT with a DSA profile. (Large preview)

If you are just starting with a mechanical keyboard, I’m not sure it’s useful to worry too much about the key profile. However, it might be interesting to consider the kind of options available.

Signature Plastics, one of the largest and most popular producers of custom keycaps has a page dedicated to the different profiles they offer with PDF specifications to boot:

You might also see row numbers mentioned; this has most relevance if you are looking at a sculpted set of keys.

Row refers to the location of the keys on the keyboard and is most important when ordering a sculptured keycap family. On a standard QWERTY board, the “number” row is row 1; the “Q” row is row 2; the “A” row is row 3; the “Z” row and the space bar row are row 4; the upper “function key” row can be either row 5 style or row 1 style.

A Realforce keyboard with different shape keycaps on different rows. (Large preview)

It is also important, if ordering an after-market set of keycaps, to consider how many of each size of key you are getting. Most keycaps are single unit, referred to as ‘1u’. Wider keys are designated in full and quarter increments. For example, the Alt, Cmd and Ctrl keys on the WASD keyboard I’m typing on as I write this are each 1.25u wide, the Tab key is 1.5u, and so on. Larger keys such as Shift and Space often have more than one mount underneath and these connect onto the board with a stabilizer (or ‘stab’, as they are referred to in mechanical keyboard circles).

Legend Marking

The three most common means of marking the legend onto each key (e.g. the E on the key for E) are double-shot, dye-sublimation and laser-etching.

Double-shot involves taking two different colors of plastic and putting one within the other; the contrasting colors creating the legend.

Dye-Sublimation, or ‘Dye-Sub’, as it is more commonly termed is a process where the markings are dyed into the plastic. Think of it like a tattoo for keycaps!

Purists will argue that double-shot creates slightly crisper legends but with high quality dye-sublimation, from a reputable brand like Signature Plastics, I think the difference is academic.

Laser etching is just as it sounds, a laser etches the legend into the keycap. However, compared to dye-sublimation or double-shot, laser etched tends to wear away far sooner and are therefore far less popular.

Keycap Materials

The overwhelming majority of keycaps are made of some sort of plastic. We won’t cover more exotic materials for keycaps here.

ABS is the plastic typically used with ‘double-shot’ key-caps. It’s a softer plastic, hence more pliable. You tend to get the widest variety of color options with double-shot but the downside is that the ABS plastic can go shiny over time. This manifests with keyboards with the most used keys visibly shiny compared to the others.

PBT plastic doesn’t tend to get shiny over time as ABS does but dye-sublimation doesn’t make as many color options possible. However, it does typically enjoy a slightly textured surface which some prefer.

As ever, it’s a preference thing.

I’ve been spending the last month switching between a keyboard with SA Lime which is a double-shot ABS plastic SA profile keycap set, and a keyboard with DSA Ferrous, a DSA profile PBT set. My personal preference is the PBT set as I enjoy the slight friction from the PBT but the ABS set is certainly no hardship!

Summary

Let me try and distill everything we’ve been through here.

Firstly, mechanical keyboards offer a level of tactility in keyboards that is simply not achievable elsewhere. Furthermore, with many boards offering programmability, it means your keyboard no longer needs to adhere to the standard layout you are used to. Each key can do whatever you want it to!

You can get a layout that suits the way you use your keyboard; compact 60%, all-rounder TKL or full size with number pad plus everything in-between.

If you are someone who suffers from RSI or, simply feel your comfort might improve with a more ergonomic keyboard, mechanical keyboards like the ErgoDox EZ should be top of your list of hardware to investigate.

There is a gamut of keyboard switches available. Audible clicky switches, smoother tactile switches and fast linears are all available. If you can’t find any to try first, consider buying a board with a hot-swappable PCB. This means you can try out other switch types at your convenience without needing to replace an entire keyboard. You don’t need to go with genuine Cherry switches, manufacturers like Kaihl offer great alternatives.

Needing a portable keyboard does not mean sacrificing on quality! Keyboards like the Happy Hacking Professional Hybrid offer a premium switch feel with Bluetooth connectivity.

You can get keycaps of every conceivable colorway and profile. Take a look at Signature Plastics website for an idea of the breadth of choice available.

If you want a ‘one-stop shop’ take a look at WASD Keyboards. Not only do they offer ANSI and ISO layouts, you can also pick the color of the case, every single key color and the type of legend on the keycaps!

Manufacturers And Suppliers

Here’s a reference and reminder of all the suppliers and manufacturers mentioned through this piece.

Happy Hacking Keyboards using the revered Topre switches and the oft-imitated HHKB 60% layout.

WASD Makers of the CODE keyboard. Offer unsurpassed choice when it comes to ordering a bespoke mechanical keyboard.

ErgoDox EZ Ergonomic mechanical keyboards with incredible choice of switches, colors. Also feature hot-swappable PCBs and programmable layout.

Pimp My Keyboard/Signature Plastics US manufacturer of high-quality after-market keycap sets.

RAMA WORKS Exclusive limited edition keyboards

Kailh makers of high-quality MX compatible keyboard switches.

Further Reading And Online Communities

Sites dedicated to mechanical keyboards:

The Rabbit Hole

After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Pre-manufactured mechanical keyboards might not be the end of your journey. It’s possible they might just be the beginning.

For the truly obsessed you can opt to build your own mechanical keyboard. It’s not as wacky a proposition as it might sound. Think of it like a Lego kit for keyboards. Choose the exact material, switch type, case style, color and flash it with whatever set of instructions you like.

In the meantime, have a think about that device you interact with day in and day out. Perhaps every key press could be that much more enjoyable, easier and satisfying if you took the time to consider that there may be something better just waiting for your attention.

Further Reading on SmashingMag:

(dm, ra, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/a-complete-guide-to-mechanical-keyboards/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/617422635067998208

[laurelkrugerr]

A Complete Guide To Mechanical Keyboards

About The Author

Ben Frain is a developer, author and occasional speaker. His blog of 10 years plus is at https://benfrain.com. A UI/UX Technical Lead at bet365.com, his books … More about Ben …

How much thought have you put into your primary input device? Ever considered how much better your interface with your computer might be? In this article, we dive into the possibilities of mechanical keyboards. The different layouts, switch types and even keycap material. Strap yourself in — this will be a deep dive!

About six years ago, a colleague I’ll call Tom, because that’s his name, forwarded me a link to the ‘WASD CODE’; a keyboard focused on the needs of programmers, designed with the help of Stack Overflow’s Jeff Atwood.

I had no idea at the time that there were people actually dedicating themselves to creating keyboards beyond the stock fare shipping with computers. As I read and re-read the blurb, I was smitten.

The keyboard that started an obsession: The WASD CODE. (Large preview)

So it came to be that shortly after, I spent $220 on my first mechanical keyboard. I imagine that many of you reading this, who have never had a mechanical keyboard, will wonder if I was of sound mind. For those that have, they likely understand entirely.

For some, mechanical keyboards elicit the same nuanced fanaticism as typography. Let me qualify that analogy.

For those who get drawn into typography, it can become an obsession. The need to choose just the right font for a heading. The ability to spend hours pouring over the descenders of various ‘g’ glyphs. The endless marveling at the merits of Helvetica.

Others, meanwhile, would be happy to just use Lobster and move on.

Just as someone versed in typography can explain to you why a font makes you feel a certain way or has a particular effect on the reader, a mechanical keyboard proponent can extol the virtues of their keyboard, their choice of switches, their particular layout and materials chosen. Take a look at the breadth of variety on offer.

I can’t tell you what’s so bad about using Lobster, but I’m going to take a shot at explaining why you might want to try a mechanical keyboard and feel a greater physical connection to the primary tool of your trade.

Our Primary Input Mechanism

For decades, keyboards have been the primary mechanisms by which we interact with our computers.

If you spend 8 hours a day working, and maybe half of that typing, for a 5-day week and 48-week working year, that’s 960 hours of typing on your keyboard every year! Despite that sobering figure, most of us just use whatever keyboard is shipped with the computer.

Look down at the grubby, unloved implement beneath your fingers. When was the last time you actually sharpened that sword? How often do you use each of the keys you press? Are the most used keys within easy reach? What about the tactility? How do the keys themselves feel? Is the travel of the keys helpful? Do you wish the travel was greater? Do you wish it was less? What about the sound? Does it annoy you? Does it annoy those around you? Do you have helpful shortcuts to adjust your volume? Skip a music track? Perform an oft-used set of keystrokes? Or what about an easy way to toggle between typing on your computer and typing into your phone?

Mechanical keyboards exist to answer as many of these questions as possible.

What Is A Mechanical Keyboard?

Generally speaking, it’s possible to define a keyboard as mechanical if it uses mechanical switches for each key.

Firstly, let’s consider the everyday alternative to mechanical switches. Typical, inexpensive, everyday computer keyboards often employ rubber dome switches. As the name implies, these are constructed with a sheet of rubber domes above electrical switches. You press down on a key and the dome collapses causing the key to be switched. You lift up your finger a little and the rubber dome plops back into shape and the key is no longer pressed. Rubber dome switches are popular because they are so cheap compared to manufacture. However, they are certainly not the best way of solving the problem of registering a keypress.

Mechanical switches offer a range of tactility unavailable with rubber dome keyboards.

Mechanical keyboards are enjoying a renaissance, which although has been going on for a number of years, is really starting to gain more widespread adoption since being embraced by the gaming community.

Now, before we get much further into this, I feel it’s my duty to be quite candid. I often read people justifying mechanical keyboards due to the fact that they ‘last longer’. Whilst this is possibly true, I don’t ever remember wearing a keyboard out. And you could probably buy a lifetime of budget keyboards and still have change left compared to the costs of a mechanical keyboard.

Buying a mechanical keyboard is not an exercise in sound economics. It’s about finding the best possible version, for you, of a tool you use almost every day. A keyboard that has just the right layout, feel, and aesthetics. Once you have your keyboard, I like to think you will rise every morning chanting the mechanical keyboard owners Creed:

“This is my keyboard. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

My keyboard is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.

Without me, my keyboard is useless. Without my keyboard, I am useless. I must type my keyboard true. I must type faster than my colleague who is trying to better me. I must program things before he does. I will…”

The sheer wealth of permutations when it comes to mechanical keyboards can be mind-boggling. In this article, we will concentrate on the broadest strokes. The considerations we feel are most important to understand if you entertain purchasing a mechanical keyboard.

We will cover:

The Plethora Of Key Switch Types

Arguably the single most obvious distinguishing feature of a mechanical keyboard compared to a ‘normal’ keyboard is the switches.

There are a plethora of different mechanical switches for keyboards. They can be most easily categorized by the physical shape and stem mounting. The latter is the protruding mount that the keycaps attach to. The switch ‘type’ is the defining characteristic of the switch itself — typically categorized as ‘linear’, ‘clicky’ or ‘tactile’.

Physical Switch Differences

Far and away, the most common physical type of switch is ‘Cherry MX’ as well as the now numerous Cherry MX clones.

Historically, due to patents, the manufacturer, Cherry was the only brand able to make switches with their mount system. Now their patent has expired, there are a number of other manufacturers offering comparable and compatible switches for less.

Nowadays, it isn’t necessary to get hung up on getting a board with genuine Cherry brand switches. I’d argue that there are brands being far more progressive and innovative in switch development these days. Kailh is a Chinese brand that not just makes comparable switches for MX mounts with color designations (such as ‘Blue’, ‘Green’, ‘Red’, and so on) to approximate the equivalent Cherry switch (we’ll cover color designations for switches in a moment), but they also produce ‘box’ switches which are IP56 dust and water-resistant, as well as ‘speed’ switches aimed at gamers. These have shorter travel resulting in quicker switch actuation. Hence, the ‘Speed’ moniker.

Kailh produce comparable and often more interesting switches than the original Cherry models. (Large preview)

There are also many other fine key switch types that bear no relation to Cherry — Topre being a personal favorite. Topre switches are designed and built in Japan and give a marvelous tactile feel that some swear by. However, they are expensive and subsequently less common.

If you want a decent idea of the most popular options, take a look at the list available on the Keyswitch guide at the Mechanical Keyboards store.

Key switches — especially Cherry MX and variants — are typically labeled by color; for example, ‘Blue’ or ‘Brown’. Different colors are attributed to different switch types; most typically, a switch that is either linear, tactile, or clicky.

Whilst trying to describe the way a key switch feels in words might seem like an exercise in futility, I’m going to attempt just that regardless.

A linear switch is just like a linear animation, there are no curves, you press down and the resistance feels constant all the way down until the switch ‘bottoms out’.

A tactile switch is more like an easeInQuart animation curve; there is a sort of bump at the top you have to get over and then it moves down like a linear switch until bottoming out. This little bit of tactile resistance at the top of the keypress is what earns them the label of ‘tactile’.

A clicky switch is a bit more simple to communicate. It has a similar kind of bump at the top like a tactile switch but makes an audible click on actuation (or both directions in the case of Kailh Box Whites, for example).

For each switch type, there are differing key switch ‘weights’; that is, how much force is required to make the switch do its thing. Key switch actuation force is often measured in cN units (centinewton). Again, colors are arbitrarily assigned. So, for instance, a Kailh Box Red is a soft linear switch whilst a Kailh Box Black is also a linear but heavier. There’s no real sense to the color designations, simply that Cherry made them originally and now others follow suit.

Now, in a geeky topic, the subject of key switches can take on proportions of geekiness even I get uncomfortable with.

So, in the interests of trying to keep you with me, the TL;DR of keyboard switch types is this: If you are looking for a mechanical keyboard (perhaps your first one), opt for a board with Cherry MX, or Cherry MX compatible switches such as those made by Kailh. Choose a switch type which, at least on paper, sounds appealing. Buy it, and see how you get on.

To offer just a little more broad guidance:

Like the idea of linear switches? Go for Cherry MX or compatible red switches.

If a tactile switch seems like it would be your bag, opt for MX brown or compatible switches. If you can find a good offer on a Topre-based board a Happy Hacking or Realforce, that would be a solid choice, too.

Does a clicky switch appeal? MX Blue or compatible switches for you.

I’m making such broad recommendations because ultimately it’s all preference anyway. However, if you do go for switches with an MX mounting stem, then you give yourself the greatest number of options when it comes to keycaps.

Despite telling you it is all preference, we thought it might be useful to try and describe the differences in the mechanical keyboards switches from first-hand experience.

Subjective Switch Feel

We tried a number of different Kailh switches in a 87-Key TKL keyboard for comparison. We also tried a WASD CODE v2 with MX Blue switches, and a WASD CODE v3 board with Zealio switches. In addition, we also tried the Happy Hacking Professional Hybrid with Topre switches.

Kailh Box Whites have a little click as the key travels down and again on the way back up, a Cherry Blue MX switch just clicks on the way down. Both are pleasant and give satisfying feedback. It’s easy to get addicted to the thick-thock-thick-thock rhythm as you type with clicky switches! However, a loud clicky keyboard is perhaps not the best choice if you work in a shared office space. Unless, that is, you want to exact ‘death by a thousand clicks’ revenge on Bob in accounts for his ridiculous booming voice!

In terms of tactile switches, the Kailh Speed Copper feels like they have a little more resistance than a standard Kailh Brown. The Kailh Speed Coppers felt very similar to the Zealio switches in the WASD CODE board. It would take a real enthusiast to be able to discern any difference in a blind test. If you were to ask me today which switch to opt for as the best ‘all rounder’ I would suggest the Kaihl Brown or Speed Copper, or the Zealio switches. All felt great for typing/coding with the tactile feel providing a nice compromise between feel and volume.

The Kailh Speed Silver switches have similar weight/resistance to the Kailh browns but as they are linear, the resistance is felt all the way down the keypress. The sound is slightly higher-pitched in the Silver than the Browns, and the Copper Kaihls are a deeper sound still.

The Topre switches are different again. They provide a tactile feel that is simply impossible to replicate in a Cherry style keyboard. There is a consistency and solidity to the keys which every keyboard enthusiast should try at some point.

I must emphasize once again that these are very fine margins. Any of these switches are going to provide a level of feedback far exceeding that of a standard ‘off the shelf’ keyboard.

Keyboard Layouts And Sizes

With the touchy-feely issue of switches dealt with, let’s move on to the next wall of acronyms and abbreviations. These deal with the keyboard layout.

Keyboard Sizes

A keyboard layout is most typically defined first and foremost by its size. Going smallest to largest:

“40%” diminutive layout where many keys are doubled up, requiring an additional key to be pressed alongside the desired one. Unless you have a specific reason to have one, I couldn’t recommend this layout for practical purposes;

“60%” typically a normal key layout minus a dedicated arrow key cluster, home/end/page up and page down or function keys;

“65%” compact like a 60% but usually incorporating at least an arrow cluster;

“75%” usually brings in a distinct function row;

“TKL” the ‘Ten Key-Less’ is a more conventional layout, think of a ‘normal’ keyboard minus the number pad section;

Full size; the typical keyboard layout complete with function keys, number pad, and arrow cluster.

For a good feel of the many layout variations, take a look at this guide on Drop.

Note: There are popular layouts that are sub-distinctions of these sizes. For example, the Happy Hacking Keyboard layout, or ‘HHKB’ as it is often referred to, is a layout over 20 years old and originally designed for UNIX users. It remains incredibly popular because it was designed around the philosophy of keeping hands around the home row, something that perpetuates for Vim users today.

The legendary HHKB keyboard has it’s own, oft imitated, 60% layout. (Large preview)

Ergonomic Keyboards

Some people stumble into mechanical keyboards in the search for a more ergonomic keyboard. One area where mechanical keyboards can honestly claim some bragging rights is in the variety of ergonomic boards and layouts on offer.

For example, consider the Ergodox EZ. This keyboard is completely split (albeit apart from a wire connecting the two halves) and enjoys the increasingly popular feature of a ‘hotswap’ printed circuit board. This means that you can easily swap out one lot of mechanical switches for another depending upon your preference. That’s certainly a good thing.

It’s common to start with mechanical keyboards favoring one switch type and then as time goes on you grow to prefer another. This way, you don’t have to buy a whole new keyboard; just replace the switches. The Ergodox EZ is also entirely programmable meaning you can adjust any key to do whatever you like. The layout choices are genuinely almost infinite.

The ErgoDox EZ is an ergonomic split design keyboard with a fully programmable PCB and hotswap PCB. (Large preview)

The ErgoDox EZ’s initial layout is itself, certainly unconventional. There’s not just the split to get accustomed to, the Ergodox EZ also has ‘ortholinear’ key layout, casting aside the staggered key layout which we have become accustomed to (a throwback to typewriters where staggering the keys was a mechanical necessity). Thankfully, the Ergodox EZ also enjoys supporting software that teaches and tests your accuracy and ultimately improves your typing speed.

Regardless of how you feel about the aesthetics, if you’re someone who suffers from a condition such as RSI, such factors are likely to pale into insignificance. As long as you are prepared to invest some time re-learning your typing, it might be the best $350 you can invest in your personal hardware, and perhaps even personal well-being.

Hotswap and programmable keyboards are getting more and more common but they remain largely a feature of ‘build your own’ keyboards. Building your own keyboard is a whole other related topic beyond the remit of this article. But be sure to let us know if that is a topic you’d like us to cover.

ANSI Or ISO

There is also the consideration of regional peculiarities; for users in the Western world this boils down to ANSI (American National Standards Institute), with the straight enter key one row high, or ISO (International Organization for Standardization), typified with the angular enter key taking up two rows of height.

The biggest differentiator in the Western world is the ISO or ANSI layout. (Large preview)

Whilst these might be the most distinct visual differences, they are not the only ones.

However, for simplicity, unless you have a reason not to, it makes the most sense to stick with the ANSI/ISO layout you use currently. Although, it is worth pointing out there are considerably more choices for keycaps and board layouts when it comes to ANSI. More than you would ever want to know about ANSI and ISO layouts can be found on Wikipedia.

Analysing Your Key Presses

At first glance, some of the smaller layout sizes such as 60% and 65% might seem completely impractical. However, you might be surprised to know just how little you use certain keys.

Rather than guessing, you can answer that question with cold hard data by logging your keystrokes for a few weeks. There are a number of programs to do this. I used Loggerman.

Loggerman runs in the background and counts up all your key presses. It then lets you run a report to show a heatmap of where your keypresses actually are. Here’s my own heat map for a three-week period.

Use a key logger to find out which keys you really need. (Large preview)

Despite the image showing a Macbook, I wasn’t actually typing on one; I was typing on a WASD Code v3 TKL. Therefore, if you do this kind of analysis, it’s necessary to think about where the keys you press a lot are on your own keyboard. What interested me looking at that was that whilst a lot of general key presses were around the centre, there are big concentrations on the escape key at the top left, the delete key, nearly top right and the arrow cluster bottom right.

I’m usually writing in Vim these days, so if you’re wondering why the escape key is used so much, it’s to exit ‘insert’ mode. Any developer wouldn’t be surprised to see delete and the arrow keys featuring heavily in my usage though — although Vim purists would berate me for not using h,j,k and l more!

So, what to take from this? If I was in the market for another keyboard, and the honest truth is, I probably always will be, I might think about looking for a layout where the physical distance between my most used keys is less. For example, something like a 65% where the escape key is on the first row and the arrow cluster is nearer to my right hand. In addition, perhaps ideally, have the backspace key (confusingly often labelled as ‘delete’ on Mac hardware, despite the fact that delete should remove characters going forward) a row further down so it’s easier to reach. Or something like the ErgoDox EZ where I can put the keys anywhere I like!

A counter situation to this might be someone who deals with numbers a lot. In that situation, a dedicated number pad would likely make a lot of sense and steer the layout decision that way.

The take away is there are lots of variations on layouts. The likelihood is that there is a keyboard layout that probably better suits your needs than the layout you use currently.

Case Construction And Connectivity

The majority of mechanical keyboards are wired. Whether that is USB-C, or Mini-USB, there is a wire going from board to computer.

However, if you switch devices frequently, or travel a lot, messing around with cables is something you don’t have to put up with. Many of the well-known mechanical keyboard brands such as Filco, Matias, Corsair, Ducky, Atom and HHKB all have wireless variants.

When it comes to case construction, the two common materials are aluminium or plastic. Like most choices, there isn’t a right or wrong, just a preference. Although wireless boards tend to be plastic to save weight and improve signal from the Bluetooth controllers.

Things that are genuinely useful to consider though are boards that make some accommodation for cable location. For example, if your nearest USB port is on the left of your computer, it might be a pain if the keyboard’s port is on it’s right side. Some keyboards have multiple ports. Some, such as the WASD mentioned at the outset have channels built into the case so you can route the cable however you like. That’s a feature I don’t see often enough from other brands but I certainly miss it when it isn’t there.

Cable routing is nice addition, helping to prevent excess cable across your desktop. (Large preview)

Aesthetically, there is a wider choice of case colors in aluminium with even cerakoting and electrophoretical coating an option. But as you might imagine, with great beauty comes great expense.

Feast your eyes on the RAMA Koyu. It’s made from a single piece of solid brass, hand polished to a mirror finish! No eating crisps at your desk with this keyboard!

If they hadn’t already sold out, it could have been yours for $1000, although keycaps and switches are extra!

RAMA is to keyboards what Rolls Royce is to cars. How about a keyboard made from solid brass? (Large preview)

Keycaps

One of the biggest draws of a mechanical keyboard is that you can easily swap out the keycaps for a different set. As we discussed in the section on key switch types, the most popular switch type, when it comes to keycaps, is ‘Cherry MX’ compatible. Therefore, by far the most ubiquitous keycap mount is Cherry MX style.

However, within the realms of the MX mount connection type there are a great many options. There are choices in terms of materials used, key profiles, and legend marking method. Let’s look at each of those.

Here are some images of popular key profile types:

SA

These are quite high keys and enjoy a sculpted shape down the rows (if you were looking at the keys side on).

“Lime” is a double-shot keycap set in SA profile made by Signature Plastics in ABS plastic. (Large preview)

DSA

DSA are a lower key and although they have a slightly curved top to each key like the SA, they do not have a sculpted shape down the rows.

“Ferrous” is a keycap set by Signature Plastics made in PBT with a DSA profile. (Large preview)

If you are just starting with a mechanical keyboard, I’m not sure it’s useful to worry too much about the key profile. However, it might be interesting to consider the kind of options available.

Signature Plastics, one of the largest and most popular producers of custom keycaps has a page dedicated to the different profiles they offer with PDF specifications to boot:

You might also see row numbers mentioned; this has most relevance if you are looking at a sculpted set of keys.

Row refers to the location of the keys on the keyboard and is most important when ordering a sculptured keycap family. On a standard QWERTY board, the “number” row is row 1; the “Q” row is row 2; the “A” row is row 3; the “Z” row and the space bar row are row 4; the upper “function key” row can be either row 5 style or row 1 style.

A Realforce keyboard with different shape keycaps on different rows. (Large preview)

It is also important, if ordering an after-market set of keycaps, to consider how many of each size of key you are getting. Most keycaps are single unit, referred to as ‘1u’. Wider keys are designated in full and quarter increments. For example, the Alt, Cmd and Ctrl keys on the WASD keyboard I’m typing on as I write this are each 1.25u wide, the Tab key is 1.5u, and so on. Larger keys such as Shift and Space often have more than one mount underneath and these connect onto the board with a stabilizer (or ‘stab’, as they are referred to in mechanical keyboard circles).

Legend Marking

The three most common means of marking the legend onto each key (e.g. the E on the key for E) are double-shot, dye-sublimation and laser-etching.

Double-shot involves taking two different colors of plastic and putting one within the other; the contrasting colors creating the legend.

Dye-Sublimation, or ‘Dye-Sub’, as it is more commonly termed is a process where the markings are dyed into the plastic. Think of it like a tattoo for keycaps!

Purists will argue that double-shot creates slightly crisper legends but with high quality dye-sublimation, from a reputable brand like Signature Plastics, I think the difference is academic.

Laser etching is just as it sounds, a laser etches the legend into the keycap. However, compared to dye-sublimation or double-shot, laser etched tends to wear away far sooner and are therefore far less popular.

Keycap Materials

The overwhelming majority of keycaps are made of some sort of plastic. We won’t cover more exotic materials for keycaps here.

ABS is the plastic typically used with ‘double-shot’ key-caps. It’s a softer plastic, hence more pliable. You tend to get the widest variety of color options with double-shot but the downside is that the ABS plastic can go shiny over time. This manifests with keyboards with the most used keys visibly shiny compared to the others.

PBT plastic doesn’t tend to get shiny over time as ABS does but dye-sublimation doesn’t make as many color options possible. However, it does typically enjoy a slightly textured surface which some prefer.

As ever, it’s a preference thing.

I’ve been spending the last month switching between a keyboard with SA Lime which is a double-shot ABS plastic SA profile keycap set, and a keyboard with DSA Ferrous, a DSA profile PBT set. My personal preference is the PBT set as I enjoy the slight friction from the PBT but the ABS set is certainly no hardship!

Summary

Let me try and distill everything we’ve been through here.

Firstly, mechanical keyboards offer a level of tactility in keyboards that is simply not achievable elsewhere. Furthermore, with many boards offering programmability, it means your keyboard no longer needs to adhere to the standard layout you are used to. Each key can do whatever you want it to!

You can get a layout that suits the way you use your keyboard; compact 60%, all-rounder TKL or full size with number pad plus everything in-between.

If you are someone who suffers from RSI or, simply feel your comfort might improve with a more ergonomic keyboard, mechanical keyboards like the ErgoDox EZ should be top of your list of hardware to investigate.

There is a gamut of keyboard switches available. Audible clicky switches, smoother tactile switches and fast linears are all available. If you can’t find any to try first, consider buying a board with a hot-swappable PCB. This means you can try out other switch types at your convenience without needing to replace an entire keyboard. You don’t need to go with genuine Cherry switches, manufacturers like Kaihl offer great alternatives.

Needing a portable keyboard does not mean sacrificing on quality! Keyboards like the Happy Hacking Professional Hybrid offer a premium switch feel with Bluetooth connectivity.

You can get keycaps of every conceivable colorway and profile. Take a look at Signature Plastics website for an idea of the breadth of choice available.

If you want a ‘one-stop shop’ take a look at WASD Keyboards. Not only do they offer ANSI and ISO layouts, you can also pick the color of the case, every single key color and the type of legend on the keycaps!

Manufacturers And Suppliers

Here’s a reference and reminder of all the suppliers and manufacturers mentioned through this piece.

Happy Hacking Keyboards using the revered Topre switches and the oft-imitated HHKB 60% layout.

WASD Makers of the CODE keyboard. Offer unsurpassed choice when it comes to ordering a bespoke mechanical keyboard.

ErgoDox EZ Ergonomic mechanical keyboards with incredible choice of switches, colors. Also feature hot-swappable PCBs and programmable layout.

Pimp My Keyboard/Signature Plastics US manufacturer of high-quality after-market keycap sets.

RAMA WORKS Exclusive limited edition keyboards

Kailh makers of high-quality MX compatible keyboard switches.

Further Reading And Online Communities

Sites dedicated to mechanical keyboards:

The Rabbit Hole

After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Pre-manufactured mechanical keyboards might not be the end of your journey. It’s possible they might just be the beginning.

For the truly obsessed you can opt to build your own mechanical keyboard. It’s not as wacky a proposition as it might sound. Think of it like a Lego kit for keyboards. Choose the exact material, switch type, case style, color and flash it with whatever set of instructions you like.

In the meantime, have a think about that device you interact with day in and day out. Perhaps every key press could be that much more enjoyable, easier and satisfying if you took the time to consider that there may be something better just waiting for your attention.

Further Reading on SmashingMag:

(dm, ra, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/a-complete-guide-to-mechanical-keyboards/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/05/a-complete-guide-to-mechanical-keyboards.html

[scpie]

A Complete Guide To Mechanical Keyboards

About The Author

Ben Frain is a developer, author and occasional speaker. His blog of 10 years plus is at https://benfrain.com. A UI/UX Technical Lead at bet365.com, his books … More about Ben …

How much thought have you put into your primary input device? Ever considered how much better your interface with your computer might be? In this article, we dive into the possibilities of mechanical keyboards. The different layouts, switch types and even keycap material. Strap yourself in — this will be a deep dive!

About six years ago, a colleague I’ll call Tom, because that’s his name, forwarded me a link to the ‘WASD CODE’; a keyboard focused on the needs of programmers, designed with the help of Stack Overflow’s Jeff Atwood.

I had no idea at the time that there were people actually dedicating themselves to creating keyboards beyond the stock fare shipping with computers. As I read and re-read the blurb, I was smitten.

The keyboard that started an obsession: The WASD CODE. (Large preview)

So it came to be that shortly after, I spent $220 on my first mechanical keyboard. I imagine that many of you reading this, who have never had a mechanical keyboard, will wonder if I was of sound mind. For those that have, they likely understand entirely.

For some, mechanical keyboards elicit the same nuanced fanaticism as typography. Let me qualify that analogy.

For those who get drawn into typography, it can become an obsession. The need to choose just the right font for a heading. The ability to spend hours pouring over the descenders of various ‘g’ glyphs. The endless marveling at the merits of Helvetica.

Others, meanwhile, would be happy to just use Lobster and move on.

Just as someone versed in typography can explain to you why a font makes you feel a certain way or has a particular effect on the reader, a mechanical keyboard proponent can extol the virtues of their keyboard, their choice of switches, their particular layout and materials chosen. Take a look at the breadth of variety on offer.

I can’t tell you what’s so bad about using Lobster, but I’m going to take a shot at explaining why you might want to try a mechanical keyboard and feel a greater physical connection to the primary tool of your trade.

Our Primary Input Mechanism

For decades, keyboards have been the primary mechanisms by which we interact with our computers.

If you spend 8 hours a day working, and maybe half of that typing, for a 5-day week and 48-week working year, that’s 960 hours of typing on your keyboard every year! Despite that sobering figure, most of us just use whatever keyboard is shipped with the computer.

Look down at the grubby, unloved implement beneath your fingers. When was the last time you actually sharpened that sword? How often do you use each of the keys you press? Are the most used keys within easy reach? What about the tactility? How do the keys themselves feel? Is the travel of the keys helpful? Do you wish the travel was greater? Do you wish it was less? What about the sound? Does it annoy you? Does it annoy those around you? Do you have helpful shortcuts to adjust your volume? Skip a music track? Perform an oft-used set of keystrokes? Or what about an easy way to toggle between typing on your computer and typing into your phone?

Mechanical keyboards exist to answer as many of these questions as possible.

What Is A Mechanical Keyboard?

Generally speaking, it’s possible to define a keyboard as mechanical if it uses mechanical switches for each key.

Firstly, let’s consider the everyday alternative to mechanical switches. Typical, inexpensive, everyday computer keyboards often employ rubber dome switches. As the name implies, these are constructed with a sheet of rubber domes above electrical switches. You press down on a key and the dome collapses causing the key to be switched. You lift up your finger a little and the rubber dome plops back into shape and the key is no longer pressed. Rubber dome switches are popular because they are so cheap compared to manufacture. However, they are certainly not the best way of solving the problem of registering a keypress.

Mechanical switches offer a range of tactility unavailable with rubber dome keyboards.

Mechanical keyboards are enjoying a renaissance, which although has been going on for a number of years, is really starting to gain more widespread adoption since being embraced by the gaming community.

Now, before we get much further into this, I feel it’s my duty to be quite candid. I often read people justifying mechanical keyboards due to the fact that they ‘last longer’. Whilst this is possibly true, I don’t ever remember wearing a keyboard out. And you could probably buy a lifetime of budget keyboards and still have change left compared to the costs of a mechanical keyboard.

Buying a mechanical keyboard is not an exercise in sound economics. It’s about finding the best possible version, for you, of a tool you use almost every day. A keyboard that has just the right layout, feel, and aesthetics. Once you have your keyboard, I like to think you will rise every morning chanting the mechanical keyboard owners Creed:

“This is my keyboard. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

My keyboard is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.

Without me, my keyboard is useless. Without my keyboard, I am useless. I must type my keyboard true. I must type faster than my colleague who is trying to better me. I must program things before he does. I will…”

The sheer wealth of permutations when it comes to mechanical keyboards can be mind-boggling. In this article, we will concentrate on the broadest strokes. The considerations we feel are most important to understand if you entertain purchasing a mechanical keyboard.

We will cover:

The Plethora Of Key Switch Types

Arguably the single most obvious distinguishing feature of a mechanical keyboard compared to a ‘normal’ keyboard is the switches.

There are a plethora of different mechanical switches for keyboards. They can be most easily categorized by the physical shape and stem mounting. The latter is the protruding mount that the keycaps attach to. The switch ‘type’ is the defining characteristic of the switch itself — typically categorized as ‘linear’, ‘clicky’ or ‘tactile’.

Physical Switch Differences

Far and away, the most common physical type of switch is ‘Cherry MX’ as well as the now numerous Cherry MX clones.

Historically, due to patents, the manufacturer, Cherry was the only brand able to make switches with their mount system. Now their patent has expired, there are a number of other manufacturers offering comparable and compatible switches for less.

Nowadays, it isn’t necessary to get hung up on getting a board with genuine Cherry brand switches. I’d argue that there are brands being far more progressive and innovative in switch development these days. Kailh is a Chinese brand that not just makes comparable switches for MX mounts with color designations (such as ‘Blue’, ‘Green’, ‘Red’, and so on) to approximate the equivalent Cherry switch (we’ll cover color designations for switches in a moment), but they also produce ‘box’ switches which are IP56 dust and water-resistant, as well as ‘speed’ switches aimed at gamers. These have shorter travel resulting in quicker switch actuation. Hence, the ‘Speed’ moniker.

Kailh produce comparable and often more interesting switches than the original Cherry models. (Large preview)

There are also many other fine key switch types that bear no relation to Cherry — Topre being a personal favorite. Topre switches are designed and built in Japan and give a marvelous tactile feel that some swear by. However, they are expensive and subsequently less common.

If you want a decent idea of the most popular options, take a look at the list available on the Keyswitch guide at the Mechanical Keyboards store.

Key switches — especially Cherry MX and variants — are typically labeled by color; for example, ‘Blue’ or ‘Brown’. Different colors are attributed to different switch types; most typically, a switch that is either linear, tactile, or clicky.

Whilst trying to describe the way a key switch feels in words might seem like an exercise in futility, I’m going to attempt just that regardless.

A linear switch is just like a linear animation, there are no curves, you press down and the resistance feels constant all the way down until the switch ‘bottoms out’.

A tactile switch is more like an easeInQuart animation curve; there is a sort of bump at the top you have to get over and then it moves down like a linear switch until bottoming out. This little bit of tactile resistance at the top of the keypress is what earns them the label of ‘tactile’.

A clicky switch is a bit more simple to communicate. It has a similar kind of bump at the top like a tactile switch but makes an audible click on actuation (or both directions in the case of Kailh Box Whites, for example).

For each switch type, there are differing key switch ‘weights’; that is, how much force is required to make the switch do its thing. Key switch actuation force is often measured in cN units (centinewton). Again, colors are arbitrarily assigned. So, for instance, a Kailh Box Red is a soft linear switch whilst a Kailh Box Black is also a linear but heavier. There’s no real sense to the color designations, simply that Cherry made them originally and now others follow suit.

Now, in a geeky topic, the subject of key switches can take on proportions of geekiness even I get uncomfortable with.

So, in the interests of trying to keep you with me, the TL;DR of keyboard switch types is this: If you are looking for a mechanical keyboard (perhaps your first one), opt for a board with Cherry MX, or Cherry MX compatible switches such as those made by Kailh. Choose a switch type which, at least on paper, sounds appealing. Buy it, and see how you get on.

To offer just a little more broad guidance:

Like the idea of linear switches? Go for Cherry MX or compatible red switches.

If a tactile switch seems like it would be your bag, opt for MX brown or compatible switches. If you can find a good offer on a Topre-based board a Happy Hacking or Realforce, that would be a solid choice, too.

Does a clicky switch appeal? MX Blue or compatible switches for you.

I’m making such broad recommendations because ultimately it’s all preference anyway. However, if you do go for switches with an MX mounting stem, then you give yourself the greatest number of options when it comes to keycaps.

Despite telling you it is all preference, we thought it might be useful to try and describe the differences in the mechanical keyboards switches from first-hand experience.

Subjective Switch Feel

We tried a number of different Kailh switches in a 87-Key TKL keyboard for comparison. We also tried a WASD CODE v2 with MX Blue switches, and a WASD CODE v3 board with Zealio switches. In addition, we also tried the Happy Hacking Professional Hybrid with Topre switches.

Kailh Box Whites have a little click as the key travels down and again on the way back up, a Cherry Blue MX switch just clicks on the way down. Both are pleasant and give satisfying feedback. It’s easy to get addicted to the thick-thock-thick-thock rhythm as you type with clicky switches! However, a loud clicky keyboard is perhaps not the best choice if you work in a shared office space. Unless, that is, you want to exact ‘death by a thousand clicks’ revenge on Bob in accounts for his ridiculous booming voice!

In terms of tactile switches, the Kailh Speed Copper feels like they have a little more resistance than a standard Kailh Brown. The Kailh Speed Coppers felt very similar to the Zealio switches in the WASD CODE board. It would take a real enthusiast to be able to discern any difference in a blind test. If you were to ask me today which switch to opt for as the best ‘all rounder’ I would suggest the Kaihl Brown or Speed Copper, or the Zealio switches. All felt great for typing/coding with the tactile feel providing a nice compromise between feel and volume.

The Kailh Speed Silver switches have similar weight/resistance to the Kailh browns but as they are linear, the resistance is felt all the way down the keypress. The sound is slightly higher-pitched in the Silver than the Browns, and the Copper Kaihls are a deeper sound still.

The Topre switches are different again. They provide a tactile feel that is simply impossible to replicate in a Cherry style keyboard. There is a consistency and solidity to the keys which every keyboard enthusiast should try at some point.

I must emphasize once again that these are very fine margins. Any of these switches are going to provide a level of feedback far exceeding that of a standard ‘off the shelf’ keyboard.

Keyboard Layouts And Sizes

With the touchy-feely issue of switches dealt with, let’s move on to the next wall of acronyms and abbreviations. These deal with the keyboard layout.

Keyboard Sizes

A keyboard layout is most typically defined first and foremost by its size. Going smallest to largest:

“40%” diminutive layout where many keys are doubled up, requiring an additional key to be pressed alongside the desired one. Unless you have a specific reason to have one, I couldn’t recommend this layout for practical purposes;

“60%” typically a normal key layout minus a dedicated arrow key cluster, home/end/page up and page down or function keys;

“65%” compact like a 60% but usually incorporating at least an arrow cluster;

“75%” usually brings in a distinct function row;

“TKL” the ‘Ten Key-Less’ is a more conventional layout, think of a ‘normal’ keyboard minus the number pad section;

Full size; the typical keyboard layout complete with function keys, number pad, and arrow cluster.

For a good feel of the many layout variations, take a look at this guide on Drop.

Note: There are popular layouts that are sub-distinctions of these sizes. For example, the Happy Hacking Keyboard layout, or ‘HHKB’ as it is often referred to, is a layout over 20 years old and originally designed for UNIX users. It remains incredibly popular because it was designed around the philosophy of keeping hands around the home row, something that perpetuates for Vim users today.

The legendary HHKB keyboard has it’s own, oft imitated, 60% layout. (Large preview)

Ergonomic Keyboards

Some people stumble into mechanical keyboards in the search for a more ergonomic keyboard. One area where mechanical keyboards can honestly claim some bragging rights is in the variety of ergonomic boards and layouts on offer.

For example, consider the Ergodox EZ. This keyboard is completely split (albeit apart from a wire connecting the two halves) and enjoys the increasingly popular feature of a ‘hotswap’ printed circuit board. This means that you can easily swap out one lot of mechanical switches for another depending upon your preference. That’s certainly a good thing.

It’s common to start with mechanical keyboards favoring one switch type and then as time goes on you grow to prefer another. This way, you don’t have to buy a whole new keyboard; just replace the switches. The Ergodox EZ is also entirely programmable meaning you can adjust any key to do whatever you like. The layout choices are genuinely almost infinite.

The ErgoDox EZ is an ergonomic split design keyboard with a fully programmable PCB and hotswap PCB. (Large preview)

The ErgoDox EZ’s initial layout is itself, certainly unconventional. There’s not just the split to get accustomed to, the Ergodox EZ also has ‘ortholinear’ key layout, casting aside the staggered key layout which we have become accustomed to (a throwback to typewriters where staggering the keys was a mechanical necessity). Thankfully, the Ergodox EZ also enjoys supporting software that teaches and tests your accuracy and ultimately improves your typing speed.

Regardless of how you feel about the aesthetics, if you’re someone who suffers from a condition such as RSI, such factors are likely to pale into insignificance. As long as you are prepared to invest some time re-learning your typing, it might be the best $350 you can invest in your personal hardware, and perhaps even personal well-being.

Hotswap and programmable keyboards are getting more and more common but they remain largely a feature of ‘build your own’ keyboards. Building your own keyboard is a whole other related topic beyond the remit of this article. But be sure to let us know if that is a topic you’d like us to cover.

ANSI Or ISO

There is also the consideration of regional peculiarities; for users in the Western world this boils down to ANSI (American National Standards Institute), with the straight enter key one row high, or ISO (International Organization for Standardization), typified with the angular enter key taking up two rows of height.

The biggest differentiator in the Western world is the ISO or ANSI layout. (Large preview)

Whilst these might be the most distinct visual differences, they are not the only ones.

However, for simplicity, unless you have a reason not to, it makes the most sense to stick with the ANSI/ISO layout you use currently. Although, it is worth pointing out there are considerably more choices for keycaps and board layouts when it comes to ANSI. More than you would ever want to know about ANSI and ISO layouts can be found on Wikipedia.

Analysing Your Key Presses

At first glance, some of the smaller layout sizes such as 60% and 65% might seem completely impractical. However, you might be surprised to know just how little you use certain keys.

Rather than guessing, you can answer that question with cold hard data by logging your keystrokes for a few weeks. There are a number of programs to do this. I used Loggerman.

Loggerman runs in the background and counts up all your key presses. It then lets you run a report to show a heatmap of where your keypresses actually are. Here’s my own heat map for a three-week period.

Use a key logger to find out which keys you really need. (Large preview)

Despite the image showing a Macbook, I wasn’t actually typing on one; I was typing on a WASD Code v3 TKL. Therefore, if you do this kind of analysis, it’s necessary to think about where the keys you press a lot are on your own keyboard. What interested me looking at that was that whilst a lot of general key presses were around the centre, there are big concentrations on the escape key at the top left, the delete key, nearly top right and the arrow cluster bottom right.

I’m usually writing in Vim these days, so if you’re wondering why the escape key is used so much, it’s to exit ‘insert’ mode. Any developer wouldn’t be surprised to see delete and the arrow keys featuring heavily in my usage though — although Vim purists would berate me for not using h,j,k and l more!

So, what to take from this? If I was in the market for another keyboard, and the honest truth is, I probably always will be, I might think about looking for a layout where the physical distance between my most used keys is less. For example, something like a 65% where the escape key is on the first row and the arrow cluster is nearer to my right hand. In addition, perhaps ideally, have the backspace key (confusingly often labelled as ‘delete’ on Mac hardware, despite the fact that delete should remove characters going forward) a row further down so it’s easier to reach. Or something like the ErgoDox EZ where I can put the keys anywhere I like!

A counter situation to this might be someone who deals with numbers a lot. In that situation, a dedicated number pad would likely make a lot of sense and steer the layout decision that way.

The take away is there are lots of variations on layouts. The likelihood is that there is a keyboard layout that probably better suits your needs than the layout you use currently.

Case Construction And Connectivity

The majority of mechanical keyboards are wired. Whether that is USB-C, or Mini-USB, there is a wire going from board to computer.

However, if you switch devices frequently, or travel a lot, messing around with cables is something you don’t have to put up with. Many of the well-known mechanical keyboard brands such as Filco, Matias, Corsair, Ducky, Atom and HHKB all have wireless variants.

When it comes to case construction, the two common materials are aluminium or plastic. Like most choices, there isn’t a right or wrong, just a preference. Although wireless boards tend to be plastic to save weight and improve signal from the Bluetooth controllers.

Things that are genuinely useful to consider though are boards that make some accommodation for cable location. For example, if your nearest USB port is on the left of your computer, it might be a pain if the keyboard’s port is on it’s right side. Some keyboards have multiple ports. Some, such as the WASD mentioned at the outset have channels built into the case so you can route the cable however you like. That’s a feature I don’t see often enough from other brands but I certainly miss it when it isn’t there.

Cable routing is nice addition, helping to prevent excess cable across your desktop. (Large preview)

Aesthetically, there is a wider choice of case colors in aluminium with even cerakoting and electrophoretical coating an option. But as you might imagine, with great beauty comes great expense.

Feast your eyes on the RAMA Koyu. It’s made from a single piece of solid brass, hand polished to a mirror finish! No eating crisps at your desk with this keyboard!

If they hadn’t already sold out, it could have been yours for $1000, although keycaps and switches are extra!

RAMA is to keyboards what Rolls Royce is to cars. How about a keyboard made from solid brass? (Large preview)

Keycaps

One of the biggest draws of a mechanical keyboard is that you can easily swap out the keycaps for a different set. As we discussed in the section on key switch types, the most popular switch type, when it comes to keycaps, is ‘Cherry MX’ compatible. Therefore, by far the most ubiquitous keycap mount is Cherry MX style.

However, within the realms of the MX mount connection type there are a great many options. There are choices in terms of materials used, key profiles, and legend marking method. Let’s look at each of those.

Here are some images of popular key profile types:

SA

These are quite high keys and enjoy a sculpted shape down the rows (if you were looking at the keys side on).

“Lime” is a double-shot keycap set in SA profile made by Signature Plastics in ABS plastic. (Large preview)

DSA

DSA are a lower key and although they have a slightly curved top to each key like the SA, they do not have a sculpted shape down the rows.

“Ferrous” is a keycap set by Signature Plastics made in PBT with a DSA profile. (Large preview)

If you are just starting with a mechanical keyboard, I’m not sure it’s useful to worry too much about the key profile. However, it might be interesting to consider the kind of options available.

Signature Plastics, one of the largest and most popular producers of custom keycaps has a page dedicated to the different profiles they offer with PDF specifications to boot:

You might also see row numbers mentioned; this has most relevance if you are looking at a sculpted set of keys.

Row refers to the location of the keys on the keyboard and is most important when ordering a sculptured keycap family. On a standard QWERTY board, the “number” row is row 1; the “Q” row is row 2; the “A” row is row 3; the “Z” row and the space bar row are row 4; the upper “function key” row can be either row 5 style or row 1 style.

A Realforce keyboard with different shape keycaps on different rows. (Large preview)

It is also important, if ordering an after-market set of keycaps, to consider how many of each size of key you are getting. Most keycaps are single unit, referred to as ‘1u’. Wider keys are designated in full and quarter increments. For example, the Alt, Cmd and Ctrl keys on the WASD keyboard I’m typing on as I write this are each 1.25u wide, the Tab key is 1.5u, and so on. Larger keys such as Shift and Space often have more than one mount underneath and these connect onto the board with a stabilizer (or ‘stab’, as they are referred to in mechanical keyboard circles).

Legend Marking

The three most common means of marking the legend onto each key (e.g. the E on the key for E) are double-shot, dye-sublimation and laser-etching.

Double-shot involves taking two different colors of plastic and putting one within the other; the contrasting colors creating the legend.

Dye-Sublimation, or ‘Dye-Sub’, as it is more commonly termed is a process where the markings are dyed into the plastic. Think of it like a tattoo for keycaps!

Purists will argue that double-shot creates slightly crisper legends but with high quality dye-sublimation, from a reputable brand like Signature Plastics, I think the difference is academic.

Laser etching is just as it sounds, a laser etches the legend into the keycap. However, compared to dye-sublimation or double-shot, laser etched tends to wear away far sooner and are therefore far less popular.

Keycap Materials

The overwhelming majority of keycaps are made of some sort of plastic. We won’t cover more exotic materials for keycaps here.

ABS is the plastic typically used with ‘double-shot’ key-caps. It’s a softer plastic, hence more pliable. You tend to get the widest variety of color options with double-shot but the downside is that the ABS plastic can go shiny over time. This manifests with keyboards with the most used keys visibly shiny compared to the others.

PBT plastic doesn’t tend to get shiny over time as ABS does but dye-sublimation doesn’t make as many color options possible. However, it does typically enjoy a slightly textured surface which some prefer.

As ever, it’s a preference thing.

I’ve been spending the last month switching between a keyboard with SA Lime which is a double-shot ABS plastic SA profile keycap set, and a keyboard with DSA Ferrous, a DSA profile PBT set. My personal preference is the PBT set as I enjoy the slight friction from the PBT but the ABS set is certainly no hardship!

Summary

Let me try and distill everything we’ve been through here.

Firstly, mechanical keyboards offer a level of tactility in keyboards that is simply not achievable elsewhere. Furthermore, with many boards offering programmability, it means your keyboard no longer needs to adhere to the standard layout you are used to. Each key can do whatever you want it to!

You can get a layout that suits the way you use your keyboard; compact 60%, all-rounder TKL or full size with number pad plus everything in-between.

If you are someone who suffers from RSI or, simply feel your comfort might improve with a more ergonomic keyboard, mechanical keyboards like the ErgoDox EZ should be top of your list of hardware to investigate.

There is a gamut of keyboard switches available. Audible clicky switches, smoother tactile switches and fast linears are all available. If you can’t find any to try first, consider buying a board with a hot-swappable PCB. This means you can try out other switch types at your convenience without needing to replace an entire keyboard. You don’t need to go with genuine Cherry switches, manufacturers like Kaihl offer great alternatives.

Needing a portable keyboard does not mean sacrificing on quality! Keyboards like the Happy Hacking Professional Hybrid offer a premium switch feel with Bluetooth connectivity.

You can get keycaps of every conceivable colorway and profile. Take a look at Signature Plastics website for an idea of the breadth of choice available.

If you want a ‘one-stop shop’ take a look at WASD Keyboards. Not only do they offer ANSI and ISO layouts, you can also pick the color of the case, every single key color and the type of legend on the keycaps!

Manufacturers And Suppliers

Here’s a reference and reminder of all the suppliers and manufacturers mentioned through this piece.

Happy Hacking Keyboards using the revered Topre switches and the oft-imitated HHKB 60% layout.

WASD Makers of the CODE keyboard. Offer unsurpassed choice when it comes to ordering a bespoke mechanical keyboard.

ErgoDox EZ Ergonomic mechanical keyboards with incredible choice of switches, colors. Also feature hot-swappable PCBs and programmable layout.

Pimp My Keyboard/Signature Plastics US manufacturer of high-quality after-market keycap sets.

RAMA WORKS Exclusive limited edition keyboards

Kailh makers of high-quality MX compatible keyboard switches.

Further Reading And Online Communities

Sites dedicated to mechanical keyboards:

The Rabbit Hole

After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Pre-manufactured mechanical keyboards might not be the end of your journey. It’s possible they might just be the beginning.

For the truly obsessed you can opt to build your own mechanical keyboard. It’s not as wacky a proposition as it might sound. Think of it like a Lego kit for keyboards. Choose the exact material, switch type, case style, color and flash it with whatever set of instructions you like.

In the meantime, have a think about that device you interact with day in and day out. Perhaps every key press could be that much more enjoyable, easier and satisfying if you took the time to consider that there may be something better just waiting for your attention.

Further Reading on SmashingMag:

(dm, ra, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/a-complete-guide-to-mechanical-keyboards/

[rtrigiy]

A Tale about Tetris

           It was the summer 2018, I was taking a summer class at my university. It was in Organic Chemistry; the course was long. Class was 4 days a week for 2 hours in the morning. In the afternoon we had lab 3 of those 4 days. Not that I disliked the course or thought it was hard, it was just the same thing from day to day. As a chem major taking a chemistry course, one thing I had on me everyday was my TI-84 plus ce graphing calculator. I had recently figured out how to install a simple version Tetris on it, and though I admit that I was not the best I would play the games in the breaks we had for the class. It was not my first experience with the game, but it was at this point that I started to understand what this game was.

           Soon I after the class ended, I downloaded the app on my phone. The app itself was different from the Tetris I was used to on the calculator. I remember one of my first thoughts was it was easier as it seemed you can rotate blocks indefinitely, but it also had the challenge of the blocks dropping much faster. One of the most notable things at the time was the leader board. I wanted to be at the top. I got better at the game, slowly lasting longer and longer. I learned the basics of how to stack blocks and how to get back-to-back Tetrises. I wasn’t addicted to the game under any terms but there would be times where I would just sit down and play Tetris for a solid hour while listening to music. It took me about 2 months to get to the top of my friend’s leaderboard, and I would constantly keep improving my score, but this was not to last.

           Sometime in the next fall semester I stopped playing Tetris, I felt that I hit a point where I couldn’t get my score to go any higher. In the end I deleted the app from my phone to free up some space. I was not motivated to continue and so I stopped. Now I did not keep track of how long I stopped playing, I was focused on other things like school and anime but looking back I don’t see it as a total lost.

           One day I was on YouTube, it just an average day. I don’t remember anything in particular about that day, but I know that one thing happened. I watched a video by Nick Robinson about Tetris Effect. Most notably was that something about this video made me want to play Tetris again. So, what I did was googled Tetris and I went to freetetris.org as I remember playing it a bit on the school computers in high school. There was no eureka moment of “omg I got to play Tetris,” no I just casually started playing Tetris again. It was a new semester and I had a few long breaks between some of my classes or work. Sometimes I would go back to my dorm, but sometimes I just didn’t feel like taking the 30 minute bike ride there and back so I just headed to the library. There I would either do homework, draw, or most often than not play Tetris. I would find myself playing the game more and more often. Soon after Tetris 99 released and though at the time I didn’t have a switch I would start watching videos about it online. I was seeing these cool tricks that could be done while playing the game. A simple t-spin was too much for my inexperience mind to handle. I would try sometimes but most often than not it would end up killing my game, so I gave up on learning how to t-spin. I thought, “eh, it’s not like it’s even important to the game, I can play without them.”

           I would continue to play, one day I went to GameStop and I bought Tetris Party Deluxe DS for the Nintendo DS for like 5 dollars, this was the first time I actually paid money for Tetris. Party Deluxe became my main method of playing Tetris for a few months. It was summertime so I didn’t really have any reason to just hang out on campus. Party Deluxe DS is not the most revolutionary Tetris games, in fact I don’t think many fans of Tetris have even heard of it, let alone play it, but this was the game the “taught” me how to play Tetris. Party Deluxe DS has many game modes. There is your average sprint and marathon, but then there are a few others. There was a computer battle, and this was my first experience into competitive Tetris. At the time I could only beat levels one and two consistently. One time I beat level three, but that was solely by luck. Beating levels four and five was impossible at the time. Field Climber and Shadow were okay modes, but they didn’t hold my interest in any notable way. Yet there was one mode, Stage Racer which I felt I needed to overcome. Stage Racer was a mode in which you rotate a single falling block though a maze which required the user to understand the SRS system of modern Tetris games. It was a great mode because with it I started to learn the mechanics of the game.

           So as summer continued, I was slowly getting better at Tetris. One of the most notable events of the summer was going on a car ride to visit family in another state. It was about a ten hour drive, and I spent a large part of it playing a single game of Tetris in Party Deluxe DS in the endless marathon mode. After getting there the game lasted 7 hours but I ended it when before we got to the destination as my 3DS was about to die and it would not save the game. In this game, I was not yet used to doing t-spins and it was too valuable of a run to give up to practice, but what I did practice during that game was how to build high and clear lines near the top of the board, a skill which I still value today.

           Another notable even of the summer was I was now living at my Dad’s house, and he owned a Nintendo Switch, along with this I had finally gotten twitch prime and with it a 6 month free online subscription. Events lined up perfectly to allow me to start playing Tetris 99, and I have to say: I WAS BAD. Anyone who has played Tetris 99 knows just how hard that game is, I was scoring mid 50s average and if I was lucky, I might have been able to see a second of the top 10. I started to grinding, as well as watching more YouTube videos on Tetris 99. A YouTuber name Tafo, had some great videos on how to improve as well as just being generally fun to watch. I started to analytically watch other people play Tetris, to see what they do and try to understand how they set up certain things. This was also the point where I discovered the HardDrop wiki and researched specific mechanics of the game. I got better, by the end of the summer I was regularly in the top 10, but never number one.

           A new semester started and this time I had even more time between classes and because I was living off campus that meant more time in the library. I started playing on jtris at this time, and like Tetris 99, I was not the best, and I accepted it. I knew that I was getting good though. I had mastered the art of setting up t-spin doubles and could incorporate it into my game reliably. I improved more and more as the weeks go by.

Over Labor Day Weekend I visited my family and had to sit in another road trip, this time I was prepared. I made sure that my 3DS was fully charged and was cautious of the battery life. My goal for this game, max out the score counter in Party Deluxe DS. By the time we arrived at my relative’s house I had beaten my school in only 3/4th of the time. I would keep the 3DS on the charger and come back to it during the vacation. Also, during this vacation, I finally got my first win in Tetris 99, a moment I still look back at with happiness. On the way back I was still playing the same game of Tetris, it was over 12 hours long when we returned home. I would continue to add to this game in short burst over the next week, but sadly the run never saved in the end as the game crashed after 15 hours.

Not much happened in the following months, I would slowly improve my game, but otherwise nothing. During what I dub the lost Labor Day run, I was updating my friend on how it was going, trying to convert her to the dark side of Tetris, which worked. She was my first pupil. I gave her advice on what I have learned about Tetris, but it was mainly us just talking about Tetris. In November, I did a speech about Tetris in one of my classes which made me start paying more attention to the Tetris subreddit, and it also gave me a new appreciation for “flexing in Tetris” as I did a psychological and philosophical analysis on the topic. In December, Tetris 99 had it’s first major update since launch and I started playing it more at that point. Around the start of the next semester, I finally bought Puyo Puyo Tetris, which was just something I wanted for a while. I would continue to improve throughout the spring semester, while classes were going on.

The final major event at the time of writing this would be the outbreak of the Coronavirus, which is still occurring right moment. Society is stuck inside, and I have decided to improve on my craft of Tetris. Now one may think, what else is there to learn, well a lot. For the pass month I have been improving my speed in building and making more complex set ups. As of last week I finally feel comfortable enough to do t-spin triples in the middle of my run. I have cut off a total of 20 seconds off my sprint 40L. Finally, I got a new pupil which means another person to play and talk about Tetris with, and they only sometimes mind that I destroy them when we compete against each other.

I wanted to write this for some reason, I don’t know what compelled me to. I guess I’ve just been playing so much Tetris lately, I just wanted to look back to where this all began. Sure, I started playing Tetris before I downloaded it to my TI-84 plus ce calculator, but I feel that was point in which Tetris was more than just something to do when you were bored. Yeah, at the time I was playing it because I was bored but there was something else, something indescribable about the game at the time. Over the years there is something that keeps me coming back to this game. I can’t think of what it is.

Tetris is just a stupid game about blocks and yet I have likely put 1000s of hours into that game. This is a mystery to me. I try to come up with a reason why I like Tetris. Lately when people ask me why I play Tetris I say because it makes me think, but maybe that isn’t the reason. Sure, I like the set ups, but the game isn’t really a puzzle, yet at the same time it is a puzzle. Maybe it’s just a sunk cost fallacy, at this point I have put so much time and effort into playing and I do feel confident enough to say that I am good at the game. But at the same times, why would I put those hours in if I didn’t like the game to begin with, so that can’t be the answer.

I don’t want to say that I like Tetris because I think it’s fun. It sounds generic and I can’t even point out why I think it’s fun. It’s just doing the same thing over and over. Slowly getting better, maybe learning a few tricks along the way. People say that Tetris is relaxing, and while in some instances that is true (how I did a 15 hour marathon of the game), I like it when I keep losing and am forced to just get gud, but winning is fun too. I don’t think that’s it’s the competition, while that is an element of Tetris I enjoy, I don’t take any active role in the Tetris community.

I think that maybe I like Tetris because it is something which I can reliably go back to and know, I am good at this. Here is a thing, I suck at video games. I am a fucking casual. The game I have the most time in other than Tetris is Animal Crossing with like 600 hours. Maybe I just want to say that I am good at something. There wasn’t a point in which I didn’t believe that I wasn’t good at Tetris. Sure, every once and a while I will be like “I suck” but at the same time it’s Tetris. I don’t know anyone personally that can beat me in a Tetris battle, and even if I did since the beginning, I knew this, “There is always someone better than me in Tetris.” I like to classify myself as a Lower-High Tier player. At this point I can beat other that also play this game regularly, but I struggle at beating the highest tier players, which I am okay with. I don’t want to be the best Tetris player in the world, that sounds awful. But like that feeling of being good something I am happy about.

Tetris is a game, and it’s a game that I like.

Special mention to Tetris Friends which I played very briefly, it was not significant enough for me acknowledge in my Tetris journey , but I respect what it was and I do have fond memories of the site.

[operationrainfall]

Title Afterparty Developer Night School Studio Publisher Night School Studio Release Date October 29th, 2019 Genre Adventure Platform PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch Age Rating Mature 17+ Official Website

Editor’s Note: oprainfall’s Quentin H also had a chance to check out Afterparty back in 2019, and you can read his impressions here.

What is free will? How does family – found and biological – affect that freedom? And how does substance abuse play into all of it? Afterparty, by Night School Studio, tackles these questions and more using the colorful backdrop of Hell. I mean, where better to explore some of humanity’s biggest quandaries?

The game starts innocently enough at a college graduation party with our intrepid duo, Lola and Milo. Lola is a brusque but honest woman who does her best to be above the petty gossip of her peers, while Milo is more often than not the butt of jokes and picked on mercilessly. Thankfully, they’re both about to say goodbye to that life — figuratively and literally. It’s not actually a party, after all. It’s a farce staged by demons, and they’re in Hell. How did they die? Why are they damned? And why are they being processed together? That’s for you to find out.

The game itself is mostly comprised of walking left and right through the neon landscape of Hell itself, talking with NPCs to learn about why you’ve ended up on the wrong side of Heaven. Neither Milo nor Lola can remember what happened to them, and every dialogue choice you make helps them — and you — piece together their lives and what it means for them in death. As it turns out, Hell is actually a 9-5, and Lola and Milo have arrived right at closing time, so those answers will take a little longer to find out. But in the meantime, Satan is throwing one hell of a party, and he might just have their ticket back to the land of the living. If they can beat him at a night of boozing, maybe they can go home and that soul-searching about why they’re in Hell won’t actually matter. But to get into Lucifer’s shindig, our duo are going to need to get an invite from one of the locals, all while fending with their own personal demon, and she’s new and eager to prove herself on the job.

Most interactions offer one of two choices for you to choose, though once you unlock the drinking mechanic — Afterparty‘s main hook — a third choice opens to you. Depending on your choice of drink, this third option can run the gamut from combative to flirty to drunkenly courageous, with your choices ultimately affecting yourself and the denizens of Hell — as well as playing into the themes of free will and substance abuse.

The drinking mechanic walks a fine line between advocating for teetotalers and rampant alcoholism. Sometimes the options move the dialogue forward (I found this happened most often if you drank something that gave you Liquid Courage). Sometimes they just lead to fun flavor text. In a game about drinking Satan under the table, booze isn’t always the right answer. And whether you choose the third option or not, there are times that choice just doesn’t matter. Some parts of this story are predetermined, but it’s what you do with the choices given to you that matter. Seeing all of the dialogue options is in and of itself a fun pastime thanks to the game’s stellar writing, so seeing how each interaction can play out does offer quite a bit of replayability, since the game locks in your choices. (Which, again, plays into the free will aspect of the story.)

Speaking of dialogue, it’s definitely Afterparty‘s shining achievement. The writing is witty and clever, with plenty of references to Biblical mythology and classical religious writings. The voice acting is solid all around, with fantastic performances from Lola’s Janina Gavankar and Milk’s Khoi Dao, as well as Dave Fennoy as Satan and Ashley Burch as Sam Hill. Considering the entire game is voice acted, having these stellar performances gave the entire experience a strong polish. The game even features its own version of Twitter, called Bicker, where Hell’s populace will remark on the events of the story so far, your actions specifically, or just reference their untimely deaths in humorous ways. There’s even an achievement for wasting your time on it, and if that doesn’t scream eternally damned, I don’t know what will.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Hell itself is also pretty awesome. The vibrant neon color-scheme and character designs are all gorgeous, and the art style is actually what drew me to the game to begin with. In a game about one endless afterlife party, the game could not have gone with a better aesthetic. Even the music is catchy, thumping electronica that just gets you in the mood to dance — which, funny enough, is one of the mini-games available to you in the underworld. At certain points throughout the story, the main gameplay loop of talking to NPCs will change up to allow Lola or Milo a chance to prove their moves on the dance floor. These sequences are simple Simon Says button presses, but they were a nice break in the formula.

Afterparty also features a couple different drinking games. There’s beer pong, where you have to line up a shot (pun intended) using some rudimentary physics; and cup-stacking, where you stack each cup you drink in the same way the Stacker arcade game works. Neither of the drinking games are particularly difficult, but they’re fun and thematically relevant.

I played the game for about eight hours on GamePass, and my playthrough was marred by a few issues, almost all of which involved lag. Afterparty features several sequences where Milo and Lola will travel with Sam on her taxi across the River Styx. These are dialogue-heavy load sequences, basically, and would often stutter and skip, with the boat clipping badly through the water. At one point near the end of the game, the boat ride glitched out so badly Sam could no longer sit and would glide across the ground with one hand permanently frozen half-raised in front of her. Restarting fixed the issue, but it occurred during an important story beat, which really pulled me out of the experience.

I also had some severe lag during one of the dancing sequences to the point where I almost failed from missed or delayed button prompts. Other less egregious examples would be characters popping in and out of the screen or randomly twitching, and one or two hiccups in the dialogue. Overall it wasn’t detrimental to my playthrough, but it did happen enough for it to be noticeable.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I also wish the game did more with its environment. Night School did an amazing job creating an interesting version of Hell, but you never really get to interact with it. It’s just set-dressing for each interaction with the NPCs. It would have been cool to have something to encourage exploration. Finding Bicker NPCs was neat, but with the mythos and history the team set up for Satan and his family, as well as some of the more unique residents of Hell, a little bit of a collect-a-thon for more information and world-building would have been a nice touch.

Overall I very much enjoyed my time with Afterparty. The world was gorgeous and filled with likeable, interesting characters. It tackled themes I found particularly compelling, and the dialogue options offer a lot of replayability. I would actually love to go back and see if I can’t get some different outcomes from the ones I got my first playthrough. It’s light on gameplay, but this is a game I would definitely recommend for those who enjoy narrative experiences.

[easyreview cat1title=”Overall” cat1detail=”” cat1rating=”3.5″]

Afterparty is available on the Xbox One for $20, or free if you have Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

REVIEW: Afterparty Title Afterparty

[ciathyzareposts]

The Years in Review: 1974-1978

I’ve given up on Daniel Lawrence’s DND, so it’s time to take a look back at the years leading up to 1978.  It’s been a long time getting here: I’ve been at this blog for about five years, and while I have covered about five years worth of games it feels like I’m making slow progress. Nevertheless, this is a good time to look back, take stock, and consider where the blog is heading in the future.

When looking back at this era and determining the highlights, it’s important to remember that there’s a huge technological gulf between the mainframes that the earliest games were developed on, and the home computers that games were being created on starting in 1978. Because of that I’m going to split them up by technology, as well as by genre.

THE MAINFRAME CRPGs It’s pretty safe to say that the bulk of the time I’ve spent on this blog has been taken up by mainframe CRPGs, particularly those on the PLATO system: DND and Moria took me a year each to complete.  By the standards of the time, these are staggeringly large games, complex in a way that home computers wouldn’t be able to match until the late 1980s at the earliest. Of all the surprising things I’ve learned during the course of this blog, I think the most surprising has been that the earliest CRPGs were far from primitive compared to things like Ultima and Wizardry. And yes, I’m aware that these games were developed over many years, but for the most part the ones that I played were fully formed by the late 1970s.

There are two distinct lines of influence in this era. First was the line of top down, iconographic games started with The Dungeon (aka pedit5), and continuing through The Game of Dungeons and Orthanc. The second was the line of first-person 3D games that started with Moria, and continued by Oubliette.  The top-down line continues on into 1980s with things like Telengard, but eventually it peters out. I suppose that Ultima could be considered as part of that line, but Richard Garriott has always said that he developed his games on his own, and any resemblances are purely superficial.  Similarly, Rogue has some similarities, but that game’s creators have also denied being influenced.  The third-person 3D line is far more influential, directly influencing the Wizardry series, which in turn influenced such varied games as Bard’s Tale, Dungeon Master, and pretty much the entire Japanese RPG industry through Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.

It’s pretty obvious that all of these games were an attempt to recreate the seminal tabletop RPG, Dungeons & Dragons. As if the number of these games with the DND filename wasn’t proof enough, the mechanics are often drawn directly from that game.  But while the mechanics are drawn from D&D, the ability to craft an emergent narrative that’s inherent to that game was still beyond the technology of the 1970s. The PLATO CRPGs are all very much lacking when it comes to plot, setting, and characters, and it will be a very long time before any games can mimic any of D&D’s elements beyond exploration and combat.

I’m slightly torn when it comes to picking a Mainframe CRPG of 1974-1978. The Game of Dungeons v5.4, with a rating of 54, would be the obvious choice. It’s certainly the PLATO CRPG that I enjoyed playing the most, and by far the best of the top-down line. And yet, Moria and Oubliette are much more influential games. I can rule out Moria pretty safely, for being far too empty.  But Oubliette is a different story, with a sizable yet manageable dungeon that’s full of tricks and traps. Where Oubliette falls down is the lack of a modern community: it lives and dies on its multiplayer capabilities. If I were to go back and play in the 1970s, I’ve little doubt that Oubliette would be the game of the era. But from a modern perspective, The Game of Dungeons v5.4 is the superior game, and I have to reluctantly go with it.

Mainframe CRPG of 1974-1978: The Game of Dungeons v5.4 THE MAINFRAME ADVENTURE GAMES When it comes to adventure gaming in this era, there’s no escaping the influence of Colossal Cave Adventure. Every game that comes after it bears its influence in one form or another, to the point where “adventure” is the name of the whole genre.

There aren’t obvious lines of influence with adventure games as there are with CRPGs (although that could be my relative lack of knowledge when it comes to those two genres).  But there are many games here that feature the main elements of Colossal Cave Adventure: exploring an area, and earning points by collecting treasures. Acheton, Zork, and The Cottage all follow this format, as does the multiplayer MUD1. The main outliers to this format were Castle (which apparently predates Colossal Cave) and Aldebaran-III, both of which were created using the Wander programming language.  Aldebaran-III in particular is strong on setting and narrative, or at least it appears that way at the beginning. While the games that sprung out of Colossal Cave were the most influential in the short term, Aldebaran-III provides a glimpse into a future of adventure games more narratively sophisticated than simple treasure hunts.

It would be remiss of me not to mention MUD1 here, because it’s the progenitor of a whole line of multiplayer games, and is influential in ways that go far beyond my meager knowledge of MUDs. As with Oubliette, it would be a real contender if there was still a community playing it today. It’s still an enjoyable single-player experience, but obviously that’s not its greatest strength.

It’s quite a bit easier to pick the Mainframe Adventure Game of 1974-1978. While Colossal Cave Adventure is all-pervading in its influence, and Acheton is the largest and most challenging, there’s no denying the sheer quality of Zork. It has the highest score on the blog by a large margin (70), and holds up pretty well even today. A case could be made for it being the greatest adventure game of all time, and I wouldn’t argue too much with anyone who had that opinion.

Mainframe Adventure Game of 1974-1978: Zork THE HOME COMPUTER CRPGs With 1978, home computing finally became accessible with the advent of three computers: the TRS-80, the Apple II, and the Commodore PET. These machines were woefully under-powered compared to the mainframes I talked about above, and were quite incapable of recreating the types of games that could be found on PLATO. As such, there’s a certain disunity of theme and style in the games of 1978.

In fact, there are just five games to consider here. Beneath Apple Manor has a lot of Rogue-like elements, with its randomised top-down dungeons containing monsters represented with ASCII characters. Space is very much based on the tabletop RPG Traveller.  It has a claim on being the first sci-fi CRPG, but it plays much more like a collection of mini-games than a traditional RPG. The third game is Dungeon Campaign, a fun but somewhat slight attempt to emulate the party-based play that’s inherent to D&D. Devil’s Dungeon is potentially endless, but the version I played was bugged and broken. Finally, there’s Richard Garriott’s DND1, or at least the recreations of it that were made as part of a competition from a few years ago. It’s not really a home computer game, but in terms of gameplay and  complexity it belongs with these games.

Obviously we’re in the earliest days here, with the creators of these games still trying to figure out how to bring the tabletop RPG to home computers. There’s very little sign here of influence from the mainframe games; that won’t come for a while yet. It’s interesting to see these early efforts, and the gaming lineages that might have been, but ultimately, with the exception of DND1, these games would have little influence on the genre as a whole.

The Home CRPG of 1978 is pretty obvious. Space, Devil’s Dungeon and Dungeon Campaign hold little interest beyond an hour or so. DND1 is of great historical importance, but it’s very difficult to detect any of Ultima’s DNA in this primitive game. Instead, I have to give it to Beneath Apple Manor, which I enjoyed playing and could quite happily go back to right now.

Home CRPG of 1978: Beneath Apple Manor

THE HOME COMPUTER ADVENTURE GAMES The home computer market for adventure games was largely dominated by the work of two men. Or rather, one man and one boy: Scott Adams and Greg Hassett.

Before Infocom arrives on the scene, Scott Adams and his company Adventure International are the leaders in the adventure game field. In 1978, he produced two games: Adventureland and Pirate Adventure. The first is an obvious attempt to recreated the experience of Colossal Cave Adventure on a home computer, albeit in a highly truncated form. Pirate Adventure stretches a bit in terms of genre, but still presents a treasure hunt as the man focus (but what else do you want from a pirate game?). Both are solid, enjoyable games.

By contrast, Greg Hassett was a thirteen year old kid, who was prolific in his output (probably because all he had to worry about was teenage kid stuff). He released three games in 1978: Journey to the Centre of the Earth, King Tut’s Tomb, and The House of Seven Gables. These games were of varying quality, with House of Seven Gables obviously being the best. I have to give Hassett some credit for avoiding the fantasy genre that every else was seemingly obsessed with, but his games are somewhat lacking in polish. I mean, all the games of this era are lacking in polish, but Hassett’s efforts don’t measure up to those of Adams, at least at this point. Of the games that remain, Lords of Karma is the best, a polished effort that tries to provide some extra interest with a focus on doing good deeds. In reality it’s just another treasure hunt, but the idea was there. Treasure Hunt is an expansion of Hunt the Wumpus with some adventure game elements added in, and Quest might be the simplest adventure game I’ve ever played, with nothing more to do than choose cardinal directions to move in. I’m tossing up between Adventureland and Lords of Karma for Home Adventure Game of 1978. Karma blends in some CRPG elements, which is the sort of thing I like, but I think that Adventureland is a bit stronger as an adventure game.

Home Adventure Game of 1978: Adventureland. So that’s it for 1978, wrapped up, done, dusted and disposed of. I’m not sure where I’m going next.  I’ll probably create a page in the sidebar giving my schedule for the games of 1979, but I have to figure out what that schedule will be. I’ll probably start with either Akalabeth or Temple of Apshai, but I’m still undecided.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/the-years-in-review-1974-1978/

[thehallofgame]

Review: Pokemon Blue (3DS Port)

Release: 2016 (original 1999)

My Rating: 8/10

              Pokemon is kind of hard to review given that it’s basically a genre unto itself. However, as I’m a college student going into final exams, I figured I’d give myself a break this week. This is going to be a short piece that basically boils down to: this is a pokemon game. Probably not useful to anyone except someone who’s never played a pokemon and is thinking about starting. So, that’s the head’s up. Without further ado, let’s get into it.

              Given that the battery that supports saved games on all the Gameboy cartridges was rated to give out around now it puts players in a bit of a pickle if they want to revisit the first games in the series. Shockingly, cartridges are still floating around at a reasonable price but it’s a little risky to be gambling on someone’s home repair and the price climbs quickly for more professional jobs. Luckily, for those of us who want to acquire these games legally, some of the early pokemon titles have been ported to the 3DS eShop for 10USD each.

Pokemon Blue is an extremely faithful port of the original Gameboy title with basically no changes, except some reduction of the bright lights and flashing that earned the game its epilepsy warnings back in the day. It’s still black and white, extremely pixel-y, the text is massive on the 3DS screen, and many of the pokemon sprites are downright hideous. So, basically, just like I remember watching over my cousin’s shoulder as a child.

The warts-and-all port, which allegedly includes even the most game-breaking bugs, shows its age very clearly. It also reveals how very little pokemon has changed in its 20 years. The game, like basically all the others, opens with a child waking up in the home of his apparently single mother and being kicked out of the house and away on his pokemon journey. The local pokemon professor provides the player with their choice of three starter pokemon with an elemental affinity of water, fire, or grass. Once they’ve chosen, their rival who’s also starting his pokemon journey at the same time, will inevitably choose the pokemon with elemental advantage against the player’s pokemon. This will be useful to him during the many occasions he shows up to challenge the player to pokemon battles, block their progress and otherwise be a pest.

With their first pokemon in hand, it’s time to experience the dazzling gameplay of a twenty-year-old Gameboy game. Which is… anything but dazzling. There’s no running, only walking, and the bicycle won’t become available for a good while. Which means progress is slow as the player character crawls north to the next town with only one pokemon to their name and without the ability to capture more. Luckily, combat is largely avoidable as wild pokemon are sequestered in patches of grass that can be skirted around for the most part. Opposing trainers are the real problem because they swivel like mounted turrets, and if they catch the player in their range of vision, it’s an automatic pokemon battle.

Opposing trainers often have multiple pokemon, and wild pokemon are always encountered by themselves. Otherwise, the mechanics of both battle styles are the same. The player automatically tosses out the pokemon at the top of the list of six they can carry with them at any one time. As the opponents square up, the player will have their choice of four options: battle, use an item, flee or change pokemon. All of these options are pretty much exactly what they sound like. Items contain healing items and a few items that can be used in combat, such as pokeballs to capture wild pokemon with. Flee allows the player to escape encounters with wild pokemon, but not trainers. Change pokemon will allow the player to change pokemon out in exchange for not being able to perform any combat moves that turn. However, every fielded pokemon gains XP so this becomes a way to train up weak pokemon in high-level zones.

Each pokemon can have up to four combat moves at any one time, though low-level pokemon often have far fewer. As the signature gameplay mechanic of pokemon, battle is where all the game’s complexity lies. Each pokemon has one or two ‘types’ that indicate an elemental affinity or ‘kind’ of animal such as bug, flying, dragon ect. These types are all weak against some types and strong against others, which makes the juggling of pokemon in the player’s party very important. However, not all combat moves reflect type affinities. Many pokemon learn ‘normal’ type moves, or other moves outside their types which allow them to deal damage to types they’re disadvantaged to or hold back on enemies they have advantage over. Some attacks inflict status effects that last until the pokemon is healed, others inflict status debuffs that last only for the battle.

Unfortunately, this is where balance becomes an issue. Status debuffs can easily cripple a pokemon for the duration of a battle. Status effects, particularly poison, are basically death sentences because they will continue to damage pokemon after combat. The player can carry potions and items to fix specific status effects but if a pokemon is reduced to zero HP the player must return to town to heal the pokemon at a pokemon center. In the early stretches of the game when pokemon have low HP, there is little money and potions aren’t always available at stores this means a ton of backtracking to heal felled pokemon.

Training does have its rewards, however. In addition to the occasional new pokemon to send back to a highly illogical computer-based storage system, it repays its grueling necessity with new combat moves for leveling up pokemon. The best reward, and probably the best moment of the game for everyone involved is when a pokemon evolves. After a certain condition is met (typically reaching a certain level) a pokemon will transform into a new, stronger form with higher stats and stronger moves.

Grinding is literally inevitable in pokemon games, especially the early ones. Level progress is quite low against wild pokemon that tend to be lower level than the party’s pokemon, but higher level pokemon and trainers will quickly necessitate visits to the pokemon center. While there is a narrative based on constantly battling through an organized league of trainers and defeating the local pokemon-stealing villains, that feels like a formality. The vast majority of the game is spent crawling around caves, fields, and woods battling endless streams of pokemon, looking for a new one to carefully maneuver down to minimal HP in order to catch.

The way the world is designed feeds into this. Backtracking is constant and most roads are blocked off by obstacles that can only be overcome with special pokemon moves acquired later. This means the player is funneled town to town on an inefficient course they’ll have to re-cover later to collect any missed pokemon because roads are often one-way. The game’s stated mission of: catch every pokemon is all but impossible because of the fact the three starters can only be acquired at the start of the game and only one of each may be acquired per play through. The idea is that players will trade with friends to achieve this, but that alone would take hours upon hours even if the ‘friend’ is just you with a second 3DS and copy of the game.

Ultimately, Pokemon is super grindy and repetitive due to the fact there are only about 100 kinds of pokemon in the first game, many of which aren’t encountered in the wild. But, what pokemon isn’t is hard or taxing in any way. Its simplicity and monotony broken with occasional flashy reward was just the perfect thing for long trips twenty years ago, and the perfect things for quieting the endless panic and despair of a college student today. Pokemon is what it is, and apparently always has been. There’s not a lot of use in critiquing that. But hey, I did it anyway. Now, it’s back to studying math for me, which is just as repetitive but not nearly as fun.

[trendingnewsb]

5 Ways Life Changes When You Suffer Depression As A Child

Can you imagine anything sadder than a clinically depressed eight-year-old? Just sitting in front of the TV with a bowl of Cheerios, watching Power Rangers before school, but unable to lift the spoon because he feels like he has a swirling black vortex in his chest sucking away all joy? Well, that was me.

Only 2 percent of children suffer from depression. Not only was I one of them, but I was also unlucky enough to get a side dish of intense childhood anxiety, which resulted in a series of panic attacks that often made it feel like the world was collapsing in around me and only me. I’m better now, but there is much to be learned from my awful, awful experience.

5

For A Kid, There’s No Frame Of Reference

A depressed adult at least knows what they’re going through. You’ve spent your entire life hearing about depression or knowing people who have it (even if they’re fictional characters; modern comedy is almost entirely about depression). You’ve seen commercials for antidepressants. Kids don’t have any of that — or at least I didn’t at the time. Muppet Babies and Batman: The Animated Series didn’t take the time to explain how sometimes you’re going to wake up feeling like you’d rather not exist and you won’t know why.

A lot of people suffering depression walk around looking at happy people and wondering how they do it. Now imagine you’re a child who’s looking at everyone else frolicking on the playground, wondering why they don’t want to break down in tears and sleep all day. “Very sad” was as much as my limited vocabulary and frame of reference gave me.

Read Next

David Goyer Is Too Broody For The Awesomeness That Is He-Man

For as confused as I was, the adults around me were even more baffled. My mother and teachers didn’t know whether I was suffering through a traumatic emotional experience (this all occurred after my parents went through a messy divorce), or if I just had overactive tear ducts that exploded every now and then. No one knew what to do with me, so I was treated like any other crying third-grader — either told to shut up or offered a shoulder to cry on that did nothing but give me a golden opportunity to smear snot all over someone’s shirt. For teachers, a problem they couldn’t yell at or tell to go to the principal’s office was a problem they couldn’t solve.

4

I Got Really Good At Hiding My Emotions

Sometimes childhood depression counterintuitively comes bundled with a ton of energy. It’s a sugar rush fueled by ennui. I was just as excessively irritable and prone to temper tantrums as I was to fits of profound sadness and endless streams of tears. As such, my fight-or-flight instincts were always on high alert. I was constantly on the lookout for the next thing that was going to hurt me, which eventually led to a series of panic attacks.

I remember that one day, we were sitting through a presentation in the cafeteria/auditorium when the entire student body broke out into a loud applause. The cacophonous hooting and hollering created a wave of sound that crushed me beneath it. I covered my ears and ducked my head. I went as fetal as I could while maintaining as much of my cool as possible. In what I still consider to be one of the greatest achievements of my life, I somehow managed to have a complete breakdown in the middle of a large crowd without a single person noticing.

After that, it almost became a game. Whenever I felt an attack coming on, I’d judge how well I was hiding it against how well I had hid previous episodes. I’d take into account all sorts of factors, like the intensity of the attack, the situation I was in, the number of people I had around me, and how embarrassed I’d feel if I got caught. I used all of those factors to determine how well I had performed. I was Moneyballing my depression. The auditorium episode scored pretty high.

Another time, I had an attack during a visit to the orthodontist, brought on by the stresses of getting my braces tightened. I disguised it as a coughing fit. I really should’ve gotten some kind of medal for that one, so I’ll give it to myself now.

Pixabay

3

I Had No Idea How To Talk To My Friends About It

Children, in fact, do a lot of silent suffering. They can’t verbalize much of anything other than the backstories of their favorite action figures (in excruciating detail, to anyone who’ll listen). So when I was around all my friends trying to have fun, unable to escape this ominous sense of despair, I had no idea what to do or say. Even then, I could recognize the innocence of childhood, since I had experienced it in all of its glory just the day before. But then I’d look around at all my friends and wonder how to break it to them that life is nothing but a bubbling cauldron of shit.

I was never able to figure out how to tell my best friend that I didn’t feel like climbing that big spooky banyan tree at the end of the block because getting all worked up like that would draw out the emotions. “Nah, you go ahead. I’ll be down here identifying with the dead leaves on the ground.” The only way to achieve some semblance of normality was to put on a tough face and pretend I wasn’t falling apart.

This meant never declining an invite to participate in childlike fun. I’m down for a bike ride, just as long as I can linger in the rear of the pack, so I can really wallow in being the last-place loser I felt like. I was always down for a neighborhood-wide game of manhunt, since it offered solid crying-in-the-neighbor’s-bushes time. It gave me even more motivation to find a great hiding spot. You might be shocked to learn that no, these coping mechanisms did not work out in the long term.

2

Not Being Able To Talk About It Turned Me Into A Bully

Humans have a horrible tendency to deal with negative feelings by making others feel even worse. Some kids master this at an early age. At least, I did.

One afternoon on the school playground, a friend said something which, under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have cared about one way or another. Since I was on a depressed quest for vengeance against no one in particular, I angrily told him that if he didn’t shut up, I was going to spit on him. I then said that all eight or nine of us standing around in a circle talking would also spit on him (none of them had actually agreed to that).

He didn’t speak for the rest of the day. He told his parents, and his towering father, who I remember thinking looked like a hippie lumberjack, pulled me aside one afternoon. Rather than scold me, he told me that what I had done to his son was “very uncool.” As a kid obsessed with trying to be cool, that was devastating. I had a sense that some adults knew more about what I was going through than I did. He was one of them.

Not that it made a difference. I got into a lot of fights. I lost most of them, and didn’t care — fighting felt good. It was a way to channel the anger while pretending I was a Power Ranger fighting another one of Rita Repulsa’s hapless bad guys (it’s important to keep picturing me as a small child through all of this). If anyone slighted me, no matter how insignificant the infraction, I would unleash every curse word I absorbed through the couple of R-rated movies I’d caught secretly on cable.

I became an expert at targeting my victims’ most closely guarded insecurities with deadly precision (cruel people get that way via practice). Once, I asked a girl in my after-school care program if my friends and I could play Connect Four when she was done with it. She told me to get lost and stuck her tongue out. My human vulnerability sensors detected that she walked with noticeable limp, so I called her a cripple. She burst into tears.

I’m certain that this period of my life landed me a permanent spot on more than a few Kill Bill-style revenge lists. I was well on my way to being an adult with multiple felonies when my mom and school faculty started to piece together what was wrong.

1

I Had No Idea I Was Going Through Therapy

After my mom spoke to the administrative staff about how I was a walking cliche of troubled youth, I started seeing the school guidance counselor a couple of times a week to just talk. People may not realize that guidance counselors have degrees in educational psychology — they’re equipped to handle kids with mental health issues. They are the unsung heroes of any school, along with the janitors who clean up vomit and the lunch ladies who must heroically summon the will to not spit in the mashed potatoes every day. That’s the Justice League that keeps a school running.

I had no idea I was going to therapy. I thought I’d won a lottery where I got to take an hour-long vacation from class a couple of times a week. I figured that if all I have to do to get out of class was rip out my heart, lay bare my soul, and reveal every dark twisted horrific thought rolling around in my childish little brain, then great! Better get a box of permission slips ready, because I’m about to miss so much class that by the time I get back, everyone’s going to be uploading textbooks into their brain chips.

Everything I didn’t know was tormenting me came to light without a hint of resistance. I wasn’t put on medication, even though antidepressants are a common treatment for childhood depression. Someone just sat me down and asked me what was wrong. This helped tremendously. It still does.

I was fortunate in that this is all it took — a chance to explore my mind with a trained professional who knew how to sweet-talk kids into spilling their guts. It instilled in me tools I still use today, and it makes one wonder how many kids need this but don’t get it.

Earlier, I said that 2 percent of prepubescent kids suffer from depression. That figure comes from this study, which also points out that it’s hard as hell to spot it. Depressed kids may only complain of physical things (like bellyaches), and may even excel in school. Some channel their low self-esteem into attempts to please everyone, rather than just becoming an an angry little shithead. Still, if you see a raging little monster on a path to becoming a terrifying adult, remember that they may be one trained professional away from turning their life around.

Luis is hiding in the bushes crying again. In the meantime, you can find him on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.

Childhood is rough stuff. Remember, Disney movies will always be there for you.

If you loved this article and want more content like this, support our site with a visit to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you.

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-life-changes-when-you-suffer-depression-as-child/

from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2BhKaaB via Viral News HQ

[ciathyzareposts]

Revisiting: The Game of Dungeons (1975)

Hey, look who’s at the top of the list!

           The Game of Dungeons

United States

Independently developed in 1975 on the PLATO mainframe at the University of Illinois

PLATO lesson name dnd is sometimes given as the name of the game

Date Started: 24 February 2012

Date Ended: 25 January 2019

Total Hours: 44

Difficulty: Medium (3/5), with a lot of variance depending on playing style

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at Time of Posting: (to come later)

In preparation for taking another look at the Daniel Lawrence DND series, including Telengard, I wanted to revisit another very early PLATO RPG: The Game of Dungeons, more commonly known by its file name, dnd. It was among the first two or three computer RPGs ever created, after The Dungeon (which we just reviewed) and perhaps Orthanc and the mysterious m199h.

The primary authors of The Game of Dungeons were Gary Whisenhunt and Ray Wood. The history file available on PLATO says they were inspired by The Dungeon, but other sources–including the recollections of The Dungeon‘s author, Reginald Rutherford–say that Rutherford created The Dungeon after programming on The Game of Dungeons had already started. Rutherford’s simpler game helped fill the students’ RPG cravings until The Game of Dungeons was finished later that year. The two games share a number of features, but it’s not clear whether that’s because The Game of Dungeons developers shared their plans with the faster Rutherford, or if Rutherford came up with the elements and inspired the later game.

Shortly after the first version of The Game of Dungeons was released, Dirk Pellett transferred from Caltech to Iowa State University, which was connected to PLATO. He became instantly addicted to The Game of Dungeons and sent so many suggestions for improvements to its authors that they gave him editing privileges. Later, Dirk’s brother, Flint Pellett also contributed to the game. The earliest extant version on PLATO, 5.4, bears the names of Whisenhunt, Wood, and both Pellett brothers, and is dated 1977. A later version, 8.0, dates to 1978. Most of what I will discuss below relates to version 5.4, although I’ll look at the other versions towards the end.            

An overview, written much later, by one of the original authors.

         I covered the game only briefly back in February 2012, ultimately doubting that it was functionally possible to win it. On that point, I was later proven wrong, first by Nathan at “CRPG Adventures,” who won in 2014 (coverage starts here), then later by Ahab at “Data-Driven Gamer,” who won in 2018 (coverage starts here). In winning, both of them unearthed important facts about the game that I overlooked, and I particularly want to commend Ahab, who–in the true spirit of his blog’s name–recorded hundreds of trials to determine the best spell to use against each monster and also created a full set of maps for the dungeon’s 20 levels.

In fact, between the two of them, Nathan and Ahab described the game so exhaustively that this entire entry is mostly for internal comprehensiveness; I can only control and guarantee the continued availability of my own material. There’s also a vanity element to it. I wanted to be able to say that I won The Game of Dungeons despite that winning taking many hours I could have spent on other games.

In basic concept, The Game of Dungeons isn’t much different from The Dungeon. The character–a multi-classed fighter/magic-user/cleric, with a set of D&D-derived attributes–enters a dungeon and starts encountering randomly-placed monsters and treasures. Against the monsters, his primary weapons are spells, and when he exhausts his spell slots, he must return to the entrance to recharge them. Returning to the entrance also converts gold to experience (in a way). Combat is generally resolved instantly, with no consideration of “rounds,” and with no feedback on hits or damage. The dungeon layout is fixed, but treasure positions are randomized every time you enter (or, in the case of The Game, change levels). There are doors and secret doors. Dungeon layout affects the chances of evading enemies in combat. Both games feature permadeath.            

I’m doing well here. I just arrived in the square to find a $197,291 and a Level 374 demon (a “pushover” at my level). I’m above Level 1,000 and have over 12,000 hit points and a full set of magical gear. Unfortunately, this character got careless and died.

           Beyond that, there are a few differences. The Game of Dungeons is larger, offering 20 levels of 9 x 9 to The Dungeon‘s single level of 30 x 30. It has more magical objects to find (The Dungeon just had a magic sword), but oddly fewer monsters. In the whole game, you only encounter seven of them (aside from the one dragon): deaths, demons, ghouls, men, specters, wizards, and “glass,” which looks like a guy with glasses. There must have been some in-joke there. The Dungeon capped character development very quickly, and even monsters never got higher than Level 6, while The Game has essentially endless leveling for both monsters and the character.

The Game offers four attributes for the character–strength, dexterity, intelligence, and wisdom–and (unlike The Dungeon) lets you re-roll if you don’t like the starting values. This is worth taking some time to do because during gameplay, only strength can reliably be improved. Where The Dungeon was often cruel in its randomization of numbers, The Game will generally offer four values above 12 within half a dozen rolls, and within a couple of dozen, you can get all variables above 15.             

Attribute rolls are generous during character creation.

           Perhaps most important, The Game is far easier than The Dungeon, although it lasts far longer. When you play The Dungeon, you’re playing a game of luck, hoping that you can amass 20,000 experience points (probably from treasure) before something like a Level 6 ghoul shrugs off your spell and kills you in melee combat. In The Game, by contrast, the level of monsters you encounter and their response to your attacks is almost 100% deterministic and, thus, controllable. Among your advantages:             

On Level 1 of the dungeon, you never encounter monsters higher than Level 1 themselves.

Unless you’re carrying gold, monsters will have a maximum level of roughly that dungeon level x 2.

If you are carrying gold, monsters will have a maximum level of roughly the dungeon level x 2 plus your gold / 5000. Once you start collecting large amounts of gold, the dungeon level becomes essentially irrelevant to the difficulty of combat.

You can drop, cache, and stop picking up gold at any time.

Each monster has an empirically-determinable weakness to at least one cleric spell and one mage spell.

If the monster is of equal or lower level than you, your spell will kill it almost 100% of the time.

              “Fight all below” is a useful command that has you automatically attack trivially-easy monsters.

            Other variables at play in the game are less sure, such as the damage you’re likely to take if you fight instead of casting a spell, or the consequences of opening a treasure chest. But just with the six points above, you can carefully control your progress through the game, making it long and boring–excruciatingly so at times–but fundamentally easy. Until I figured out these rules and settled in to my final character, the number one thing to kill me was greed and impatience, usually manifested by opening treasure chests when I wasn’t sure they were safe, or refusing to drop gold once acquired.             

Killing monsters results in a victory message like “Zzapp!,” or “Swiss cheese!,” or “Eat ’em alive!”

             As with The Dungeon, gold is the primary mechanism of character development here. For every 4,000 gold pieces that you take out of the dungeon, you get one more maximum hit point. Naturally, this grows slowly at first, but by the tenth hour, a single trip might add a couple thousand hit points at a time. You get another magic user spell slot for every 10,000 gold and another cleric spell slot for every 16,000, although these both cap at 25 slots, which you hit relatively early–within an hour, once you know what you’re doing.

You can’t ignore experience from monsters, however. It’s treated separately from gold. Your experience level–which is the most important variable in combat–is defined as your current experience total divided by 10,000.

Here’s where treasure chests make things insidious. When opened, they can offer both gold and direct experience, and the values they offer are high multiples of the current dungeon level. On Level 1, for instance, loose piles of gold rarely top 50 each. Running through all 81 squares might give you 1,000 gold pieces on average. But opening a chest on Level 1 could easily give you 20,000 gold pieces, plus an equal number of experience points. Opening chests saves hours—days, potentially. Except that 1 in 4 will blow up and kill you, forcing you to lose all your progress.           

When you die, the game tells you what killed you. “The Dungeon” means that a trap killed you.

         At some point, chests stop being deadly on their levels. For instance, by about character Level 10, no chest on dungeon Level 1, even if booby-trapped, was capable of killing me outright. But because the consequences are so severe, I didn’t test how this formula developed for chests below Level 1. (My best guess is that maximum damage from treasure chests is roughly the level squared x 25.) When you encounter a chest, you have an option to examine it for traps, and at least 95% of the time, your attempt is unsuccessful (the game says that it’s too dark). To have any chance of reaching the end, you have to simply adopt a policy not to open such chests, as infuriating as it is to leave so much treasure and experience behind.

That’s true for anything beyond the first hour, anyway. When your character is new, you might as well just open every chest you encounter and hope for the best, because a few chests can save you from going mad trying to build the character 50 gold pieces at a time. After you hit a certain level, you can still open chests on Level 1 without worry–and Level 1 chests continue to be relevant until late in the game. Even when you have 10,000 hit points and are at Level 2,000, you’re not going to turn down an easy boost to either of those variables.

In fact, there’s a good argument to be made for staying on Level 1 for a long time. The other magic items that you hope to find have an equal chance of appearing on any square in any level (they can also be trapped, but there’s a more-reliable cleric spell to determine that), so you might as well find them in a low-risk place. Level 1 has multiple exits, the shortest only five steps from the entrance. Spending about two hours simply entering, walking down this corridor, exiting, and repeating will probably gift you with most of the game’s magic items and enough treasure chests to max your spell slots and put you over Level 100. That’s enough to defeat any enemy in the game as long as you’re not carrying treasure.          

Finding a magic helm in a Level 1 corridor. Unfortunately, it’s trapped.

         But you can’t stay there forever. The ultimate goal of the game is to find a dragon on Level 17-20, kill it, and get its Orb. (This dragon is the first “boss” monster in any computer RPG.) That means building your character to the point that he’s capable of defeating the dragon and then getting out with the Orb. When you carry the Orb, you encounter enemies in the 7-8000s; you can drop it if you’re overwhelmed. We don’t have enough data to know the minimum level at which success is possible or the minimum level in which it is assured, but Nathan did it at Level 6,174, Ahab did it at Level 12,440 (curiously, Ahab’s maximum hit points were a lot less than Nathan’s), and I did it somewhere in between at Level 8,645.            

This is the highest-level creature I faced in the game.

          You’re not going to get to those levels by opening chests on Level 1, at least not in a reasonable lifetime, so at some point you have to start exploring downwards. This is facilitated by an “Excelsior” transport on the first level that will drop you off anywhere between Levels 2 and 20 (for a small cost in hit points). There’s no similar transport on the lower levels, so you have to find your way back up. There are no stairs in the game; instead there are “transporters” that move you to a random location on a higher or lower level. These transporters, confusingly, exist between squares, not within them, and some of them are uni-directional, meaning you might move from Square 2 to Square 1 and have nothing happen, but then get transported to the next level when moving back again.

Accurate maps at this point are crucial. You always want to know the fastest way to the next “up” transporter, including places where it might be better to use a “Passwall” spell, which costs one mage slot, rather than burn six mage slots on the monsters in between. But this whole experience is only risky as long as you’re carrying gold (or if you started exploring down too fast). If you just drop your gold, enemies fall to a trivial level of difficulty for a Level 100+ player.             

Retrieving gold from a stash.

            You thus spend most of the game heading down to a low level, gathering millions of gold pieces, and then walking back to the entrance, occasionally dumping the gold if you collect too much too fast. When you get back to Level 2, if you still have magic slots to expend, you pass time right next to the exit so that you can attract enemies and end the expedition with as much experience as possible. (Late in the game, I discovered that a good way to grind levels was to stockpile gold on Level 2 so I could attract high-level monsters there, without having to go all the way down to the bottom of the dungeon.) You do this until you feel comfortable taking on the dragon. For me, that was over a dozen hours for the final character. Two characters that preceded him, I had above Level 3,000, but I got stupid and careless in my explorations and got them killed.

(On one character, I got careless with the command that lets you automatically fight creatures below a certain level, speeding up exploration time. This command is very dangerous. For 9/10 of the game, if you set it to about 1/10 of your current level, you’ll be fine. Level 1 creatures are incapable of damaging you at all once you’re Level 10. The same goes for Level 10 creatures once you’re Level 100. The same is not true of Level 100 creatures when you’re Level 1000. I didn’t realize that all of those so-called “low-level” combats were actually sapping my hit points because the ratio had always held up before.)         

Here I am, one step from the transporter to Level 1, burning the rest of my mage and cleric spell slots on random encounters.

       Let’s quickly cover the other items that you find in the dungeon, because they’re important to understand how this game influenced the Daniel Lawrence DND line and perhaps even Rogue. As you explore, you can randomly encounter or find:

               Potions, which are sometimes poison, but this can be determined with the expenditure of a cleric spell slot. Otherwise, they’re almost always beneficial, sometimes healing, sometimes restoring spell slots, sometimes granting experience, levitation, or invisibility, sometimes increasing strength by a point. One special potion, Astral Form, lets you move up and down and through walls without costing any spell points, but you can’t carry gold or the Orb, so it’s rarely useful except for mapping.

Books. Reading them can increase or decrease an attribute or increase or decrease experience. They can also blow up in your face. The odds of a bad outcome seem about equal to those of a good outcome, maybe even more, and I found it was rarely worth the risk. The developers must have thought so, too, because they offered a command (SHIFT-B) to turn off book encounters; the same command doesn’t exist for other types of encounters.

Magic Swords, Helmets, Armor, and Shields, and Rings of Protection, all of which let you come out of melee combats in better shape than without them. You find the first at +1, and from there subsequent findings increase the value up to +3.

           Clerically examining a magic item and finding it “harmless” is one of the best things that can happen in this game.

           Rings of Regeneration, which restore a hit point for every movement. This is useful early on, but less so later in the game when you have thousands of hit points.

Rings of Luck, which increase your chances of finding magic items.

Rings of Power, which add to spell power.

Elven Boots, which reduce random encounters.

Rings of Invisibility and Rings of Swiftness, both of which make it easier to flee random encounters.

Rings of Levitation, which lets you walk over pits. Not a huge deal if you’ve been mapping carefully. 

Magic Amulets, which give you a textual assessment of the likelihood of defeating any monster you encounter, including the dragon. The assessment is based only on physical combat, however, and thus considers only your hit points and level relative to the enemy’s. It does not seem to consider use of spells. Amulets also alert you when you’re adjacent to a transporter.

            The amulet tells me “Farewell!” even though I’m almost certain to destroy him with a spell.

          Magic Lanterns, which reveal secret doors. This treasure must be rare because only my last character found it (untrapped), and it was when he was within an hour of winning the game.

Bags of Holding, which increase the amount of gold you can carry. Without one, you can only carry 100,000 gold pieces per point of strength; with the bag, you can carry 100 times that many. This is naturally only an issue late in the game, by which point you’ve almost certainly found the bag.

                       Once found, magic items remain with you permanently except for one case: Sometimes when a monster is about to kill you, he’ll offer to spare your life in exchange for all your magic items and all your gold. Obviously, careful planning avoids such situations. But it’s still better than starting over.

It’s also worth looking at the spells. Unlike The Dungeon, you have access to all of them at the outset, and all of them require a single spell slot. (The one exception is the non-combat “Teleport” spell, which moves you up a level for 2 mage slots and 1 cleric slot. It fails 10% of the time, so it’s best not to rely on it.) Most of them are derived from Dungeons & Dragons and were featured in The Dungeon. (It’s also worth noting, if only for later reference, that the command used in both games is “Throw Spell.”) They include the mage spells “Fireball,” “Lightning,” “Flaming Arrow,” “Sleep,” and “Charm,” and the cleric spells “Holy Water,” “Exorcise,” “Pray,” and “Dispell.”

Casting a spell against a wizard. “Lightning Bolt” almost always kills them, but it can ricochet and hit you, too.

A couple of them are oddly named, including mage spells called “Kitchen Sink” and “Eye of Newt” and a humorous clerical counterpart to “Dispell” called “Datspell.” None of these spells are described, so you simply have to imagine how they’re affecting the enemies.

As I mentioned earlier, the weaknesses and resistances of the seven enemies to these spells are so stark that they’re almost deterministic. Ahab did an excellent job analyzing it on his site, including a few variables I’m glossing over. Each enemy has at least one mage spell and one cleric spell that works 100% of the time. This doesn’t mean that it will necessarily kill the enemy, and if it doesn’t, you have to follow up with a melee round. But it will kill an enemy of equal level (not counting modifiers based on equipment) about 100% of the time, and the enemy level, as above, is essentially a variable that you can control.           

“Flaming Arrow” inevitably works on spectres, but they’re immune to “Lightning Bolt.”

          On top of the 6 hours I spent on the game in 2012, it took me another 6 to internalize all the above. I burned 20 hours on two characters who ultimately died (and nearly gave up this whole enterprise), and another 12 on my final character. Once I crossed experience Level 8,000, I decided I was strong enough for the dragon plus all the enemies who attack you when you have the Orb. (The dragon moves around Levels 17-20 during the course of the game. If you encounter him before you’re ready, you can evade with 100% success.) There’s a spell that destroys the dragon, but it costs almost all of your spell slots and is thus not worth it. Like Nathan and Ahab before me, I depleted him with “Lightning Bolt” and finished him off in melee combat.               

Just after I killed the dragon.

                       After that, I just had to make my way back to Level 1 and then the exit. My name finally appeared on the list of “Finders of the Orb,” another element that we’ll want to preserve in memory for later.

As I’ve mentioned before, it’s silly to emphasize the GIMLET on these early games. I gave it a 15 when I first played it in 2012. Reviewing the categories now, I think I was too stingy on combat, equipment, and the economy, and I bumped each of those up a point for a new final score of 18.              

Getting this screen was quite a relief.

           I played version 5.4, which dates from 1977, after the Pelletts’ influence. I haven’t been able to find much information on version 1, but it apparently only had two magic items–a shield and sword. It also had so few character slots that the developers had to create an algorithm for prioritizing what active characters to purge to make room for new ones.

Version 6.0, dating from the same year, had mostly minor updates. Attributes govern more than they did in 5.4; for instance, intelligence and wisdom affect both starting and maximum magic-user and cleric spell slots, respectively. Additional monsters appear–including rust monsters, mind flayers, vampires, and balrogs–and many of them have special attack and effects. There are also new magic items, including gauntlets, wands, and horns. There’s a new option in combat to use some of these items. The most important difference is that gold adds directly to experience, which governs spell acquisition, leveling, and hit points; you no longer earn experience separately from gold.

There’s no documentation on Version 7, but Version 8 (1978) has some significant changes. (Nathan has excellent coverage of Version 8, starting here. It took him a year of on-and-off playing to win.) First, there are three dungeons to choose from: the original Whisenwood, The Caverns, and the Tomb of Doom. The same character can bounce among them. At the top, there’s a couple of shops. Whisenwood no longer has a main quest; it exists just for character development, plus a healing fountain at the bottom level that can raise attributes. The Caverns have the Orb and the dragon. The Tomb of Doom has the Grail, guarded by a vampire. Players have to find both the Orb and the Grail to enter the Hall of Fame–or simply achieve character level 1000. There are now four races–human, elf, dwarf, and gnome–to choose, as well as 20 Orders to join. Endurance appears as an attribute. Experience rewards and leveling are significantly scaled back. New monsters include Eyes of Thieving, which steal your stuff, and various types of slimes, which have all kinds of interesting effects. You can charm monsters to follow and fight for you. Robes, crosses, books, and lamps join the equipment list, and potion effects are expanded to include improvements to all attributes, Treasure Finding, Hallucination, and Fire Resistance. Each character begins with a random “inheritance,” which is usually a magic item. We’re only half a step from roguelikes at this point.

As we’ve seen previous postings, The Game of Dungeons directly influenced Daniel Lawrence and his DND/Telengard line (no matter what Lawrence himself may have said), and from there a number of other descendants like Bill Knight’s DND (1984) and Caverns of Zoarre (1984). There are also a couple of games that sprout directly from The Game without going through Lawrence, including Dungeon of Death (1979) and The Standing Stones (1983). I’d also suspect that version 8 influenced Rogue except that I can’t find any evidence that Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman had any exposure to PLATO way out in California.

Tracing the elements of each game can help us determine the appropriate family tree, and to that end, we’re indebted to a table that Ahab began in an attempt to track these elements. For instance, it’s pretty absurd for Lawrence to say that he wasn’t influenced by The Game when his original DND has an “Excelsior” transport, a spell called “Kitchen Sink,” and a list of winners titled “Finders of the Orb” (as well as the same basic gameplay, of course). Similarly, separate options to “open” and “carefully open” treasure chests help trace a line directly between The Game and Gordon Walton’s Dungeon of Death.

Based on evidence so far, I’m pretty sure this is the correct family tree. But I’ll edit as necessary. The one major problem is that the 1976/1977 “DND” is actually several versions on several platforms across several years.

           Thanks to Nathan and Ahab prompting me to spend more time with The Game of Dungeons, I feel that I understand this early, seminal RPG a lot better. Later, we’ll take a closer look at Daniel Lawrence’s original DND and the debit it owes to The Game.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/revisiting-the-game-of-dungeons-1975/

[trendingnewsb]

5 Ways Life Changes When You Suffer Depression As A Child

Can you imagine anything sadder than a clinically depressed eight-year-old? Just sitting in front of the TV with a bowl of Cheerios, watching Power Rangers before school, but unable to lift the spoon because he feels like he has a swirling black vortex in his chest sucking away all joy? Well, that was me.

Only 2 percent of children suffer from depression. Not only was I one of them, but I was also unlucky enough to get a side dish of intense childhood anxiety, which resulted in a series of panic attacks that often made it feel like the world was collapsing in around me and only me. I’m better now, but there is much to be learned from my awful, awful experience.

5

For A Kid, There’s No Frame Of Reference

A depressed adult at least knows what they’re going through. You’ve spent your entire life hearing about depression or knowing people who have it (even if they’re fictional characters; modern comedy is almost entirely about depression). You’ve seen commercials for antidepressants. Kids don’t have any of that — or at least I didn’t at the time. Muppet Babies and Batman: The Animated Series didn’t take the time to explain how sometimes you’re going to wake up feeling like you’d rather not exist and you won’t know why.

A lot of people suffering depression walk around looking at happy people and wondering how they do it. Now imagine you’re a child who’s looking at everyone else frolicking on the playground, wondering why they don’t want to break down in tears and sleep all day. “Very sad” was as much as my limited vocabulary and frame of reference gave me.

Read Next

David Goyer Is Too Broody For The Awesomeness That Is He-Man

For as confused as I was, the adults around me were even more baffled. My mother and teachers didn’t know whether I was suffering through a traumatic emotional experience (this all occurred after my parents went through a messy divorce), or if I just had overactive tear ducts that exploded every now and then. No one knew what to do with me, so I was treated like any other crying third-grader — either told to shut up or offered a shoulder to cry on that did nothing but give me a golden opportunity to smear snot all over someone’s shirt. For teachers, a problem they couldn’t yell at or tell to go to the principal’s office was a problem they couldn’t solve.

4

I Got Really Good At Hiding My Emotions

Sometimes childhood depression counterintuitively comes bundled with a ton of energy. It’s a sugar rush fueled by ennui. I was just as excessively irritable and prone to temper tantrums as I was to fits of profound sadness and endless streams of tears. As such, my fight-or-flight instincts were always on high alert. I was constantly on the lookout for the next thing that was going to hurt me, which eventually led to a series of panic attacks.

I remember that one day, we were sitting through a presentation in the cafeteria/auditorium when the entire student body broke out into a loud applause. The cacophonous hooting and hollering created a wave of sound that crushed me beneath it. I covered my ears and ducked my head. I went as fetal as I could while maintaining as much of my cool as possible. In what I still consider to be one of the greatest achievements of my life, I somehow managed to have a complete breakdown in the middle of a large crowd without a single person noticing.

After that, it almost became a game. Whenever I felt an attack coming on, I’d judge how well I was hiding it against how well I had hid previous episodes. I’d take into account all sorts of factors, like the intensity of the attack, the situation I was in, the number of people I had around me, and how embarrassed I’d feel if I got caught. I used all of those factors to determine how well I had performed. I was Moneyballing my depression. The auditorium episode scored pretty high.

Another time, I had an attack during a visit to the orthodontist, brought on by the stresses of getting my braces tightened. I disguised it as a coughing fit. I really should’ve gotten some kind of medal for that one, so I’ll give it to myself now.

Pixabay

3

I Had No Idea How To Talk To My Friends About It

Children, in fact, do a lot of silent suffering. They can’t verbalize much of anything other than the backstories of their favorite action figures (in excruciating detail, to anyone who’ll listen). So when I was around all my friends trying to have fun, unable to escape this ominous sense of despair, I had no idea what to do or say. Even then, I could recognize the innocence of childhood, since I had experienced it in all of its glory just the day before. But then I’d look around at all my friends and wonder how to break it to them that life is nothing but a bubbling cauldron of shit.

I was never able to figure out how to tell my best friend that I didn’t feel like climbing that big spooky banyan tree at the end of the block because getting all worked up like that would draw out the emotions. “Nah, you go ahead. I’ll be down here identifying with the dead leaves on the ground.” The only way to achieve some semblance of normality was to put on a tough face and pretend I wasn’t falling apart.

This meant never declining an invite to participate in childlike fun. I’m down for a bike ride, just as long as I can linger in the rear of the pack, so I can really wallow in being the last-place loser I felt like. I was always down for a neighborhood-wide game of manhunt, since it offered solid crying-in-the-neighbor’s-bushes time. It gave me even more motivation to find a great hiding spot. You might be shocked to learn that no, these coping mechanisms did not work out in the long term.

2

Not Being Able To Talk About It Turned Me Into A Bully

Humans have a horrible tendency to deal with negative feelings by making others feel even worse. Some kids master this at an early age. At least, I did.

One afternoon on the school playground, a friend said something which, under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have cared about one way or another. Since I was on a depressed quest for vengeance against no one in particular, I angrily told him that if he didn’t shut up, I was going to spit on him. I then said that all eight or nine of us standing around in a circle talking would also spit on him (none of them had actually agreed to that).

He didn’t speak for the rest of the day. He told his parents, and his towering father, who I remember thinking looked like a hippie lumberjack, pulled me aside one afternoon. Rather than scold me, he told me that what I had done to his son was “very uncool.” As a kid obsessed with trying to be cool, that was devastating. I had a sense that some adults knew more about what I was going through than I did. He was one of them.

Not that it made a difference. I got into a lot of fights. I lost most of them, and didn’t care — fighting felt good. It was a way to channel the anger while pretending I was a Power Ranger fighting another one of Rita Repulsa’s hapless bad guys (it’s important to keep picturing me as a small child through all of this). If anyone slighted me, no matter how insignificant the infraction, I would unleash every curse word I absorbed through the couple of R-rated movies I’d caught secretly on cable.

I became an expert at targeting my victims’ most closely guarded insecurities with deadly precision (cruel people get that way via practice). Once, I asked a girl in my after-school care program if my friends and I could play Connect Four when she was done with it. She told me to get lost and stuck her tongue out. My human vulnerability sensors detected that she walked with noticeable limp, so I called her a cripple. She burst into tears.

I’m certain that this period of my life landed me a permanent spot on more than a few Kill Bill-style revenge lists. I was well on my way to being an adult with multiple felonies when my mom and school faculty started to piece together what was wrong.

1

I Had No Idea I Was Going Through Therapy

After my mom spoke to the administrative staff about how I was a walking cliche of troubled youth, I started seeing the school guidance counselor a couple of times a week to just talk. People may not realize that guidance counselors have degrees in educational psychology — they’re equipped to handle kids with mental health issues. They are the unsung heroes of any school, along with the janitors who clean up vomit and the lunch ladies who must heroically summon the will to not spit in the mashed potatoes every day. That’s the Justice League that keeps a school running.

I had no idea I was going to therapy. I thought I’d won a lottery where I got to take an hour-long vacation from class a couple of times a week. I figured that if all I have to do to get out of class was rip out my heart, lay bare my soul, and reveal every dark twisted horrific thought rolling around in my childish little brain, then great! Better get a box of permission slips ready, because I’m about to miss so much class that by the time I get back, everyone’s going to be uploading textbooks into their brain chips.

Everything I didn’t know was tormenting me came to light without a hint of resistance. I wasn’t put on medication, even though antidepressants are a common treatment for childhood depression. Someone just sat me down and asked me what was wrong. This helped tremendously. It still does.

I was fortunate in that this is all it took — a chance to explore my mind with a trained professional who knew how to sweet-talk kids into spilling their guts. It instilled in me tools I still use today, and it makes one wonder how many kids need this but don’t get it.

Earlier, I said that 2 percent of prepubescent kids suffer from depression. That figure comes from this study, which also points out that it’s hard as hell to spot it. Depressed kids may only complain of physical things (like bellyaches), and may even excel in school. Some channel their low self-esteem into attempts to please everyone, rather than just becoming an an angry little shithead. Still, if you see a raging little monster on a path to becoming a terrifying adult, remember that they may be one trained professional away from turning their life around.

Luis is hiding in the bushes crying again. In the meantime, you can find him on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.

Childhood is rough stuff. Remember, Disney movies will always be there for you.

If you loved this article and want more content like this, support our site with a visit to our Contribution Page. Please and thank you.

Read more: http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-life-changes-when-you-suffer-depression-as-child/

from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2BhKaaB via Viral News HQ